Neighbors rally as man fights for life

Longtime Costa Mesa resident Bill Thomas is an outdoor enthusiast, an adventure seeker, somewhat of a perfectionist, “a big kid,” a snowboarder, a skier, a dirt bike rider, a fisherman, joker and a handyman. His wife said everyone always tells her he’s “the nicest guy.” He’s a thoughtful family man, dedicated to his wife, two sons and parents.

And now he and his family have been forced to become fighters.

On Jan. 30, despite being in great health after turning 40 in September, Thomas suffered an extremely rare type of stroke in his neck vertebrae.

On Saturday his two sons, Keoni, 3, and Makaio, 7 months, his wife, Julie Thomas, and his parents, Charlie and Carolyn Thomas, sat by his side at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian where he lay, paralyzed from the neck down with a feeding tube and an endotracheal tube, which helps him breathe.

He is conscious but cannot speak or move much of his body. Julie Thomas said he’s recently had some sensation in his arm, which she hopes is a sign of good things to come.

He uses a chart of the alphabet to spell things out, and his wife is taking a real-life crash course in reading lips.

While the Thomas family stayed by his side, friends and neighbors manned a yard sale Saturday, collecting money from bargain hunters in Bill Thomas’ name. They raised more than $2,000 to help the Thomases pay for day care, school, the mortgage and mounting hospital costs, which will only get higher.

The day before the stroke, Nancy Casey’s son begged her to cross the street to play with Bill and Keoni Thomas. She was shocked the next day when she received a prayer request e-mail from Julie Thomas. She and friends Wendy Vanover and Scott and Amy Davis planned the yard sale.

“The way the community is pulling together is absolutely amazing,” Casey said outside the Davis’ Costa Mesa home.

Since an ambulance took Bill Thomas to the hospital last month, he’s battled pneumonia, fevers and acute respiratory distress syndrome. His wife spends every day with him and makes sure that if she can’t be there, somebody is in his room.

On Jan. 30, as he did every day, Bill Thomas came home for lunch from his work as a mechanic at H&A; Auto in Costa Mesa. His wife happened to be home, so he shared with her that he hadn’t been feeling well. He felt dizzy, weak and nauseated. After getting an ice pack for his neck, he called his wife over to tell her he couldn’t feel the ice pack on his leg when he had set it there.

Bill Thomas is not one to get excited about not feeling well, Julie Thomas said.

“He has a high tolerance for pain,” she said. She remembered him coming back from dirt biking with a massive bruise on his thigh and smiled when she said he only acted like a “baby” for a minute so he could get some sympathy.

But on Jan. 30, she called the doctor. About five minutes into waiting for a call back, she saw her husband stumbling down the hallway, using the walls to hold himself up.

She became more alarmed, gave him his shoes to put on and went to get the car.

By the time she came back in the house, he told her that he wasn’t even able to put his shoes on and that she should call 911.

“My husband is not one to be like that,” Julie Thomas said in the waiting room at Hoag’s sub-intensive care unit. “When he’s not feeling well or is feeling under the weather, he jokes about it.”

Bill Thomas graduated from Costa Mesa High School in 1984. Growing up, he helped his dad work on his dirt bikes and up until 2007, went fishing with his dad every year. They often went camping in the Sierra Nevada.

“He and I are buddies,” Charlie Thomas said of his son. “We’ve always been buddies.”

Bill Thomas was happy when he was able to buy his home about a half a mile from his parents’, Casey said. He loves Costa Mesa, she said, and is often seen riding his bike or a Razor scooter up and down Paularino Street, where he lives.

Now uncertainties abound as doctors are unable to tell the Thomas family what exactly caused the stroke or if he’ll recover, although Charlie Thomas said that in his opinion, the doctors don’t seem optimistic. Julie Thomas said doctors told her that Bill’s is one of only about 30 cases known in the world.

But Julie Thomas remains confident that God has a plan for her family and that Bill Thomas will at least see his boys grow up.

“She’s a rock,” Vanover said, thinking of her longtime friend.

Julie Thomas’ oldest son is having a hard time adjusting, and she said she’s missing the backup her husband always gave her in parenting.

But she said Bill continues to display a sense of humor and is now taking control of the things he can, such as moving the bed and making sure he knows his schedule with the nurses. Concerned that he didn’t think he could share his emotions, Julie Thomas told her husband one night that it was OK to be angry, sad, frustrated or anything else a person in his condition might feel.

“Day by day,” is what he spelled out for her, she said.

Julie and Bill Thomas’ love was a work in progress since they met. The two were good buddies for about seven years before they were romantically linked, and during that time, they often gave relationship advice to one another.

After dating for about two years, they married. Five years later, they had their first child.

But soon after the wedding, they had to suffer through the painful loss of Julie’s brother in a car accident that left her sister-in-law in a wheelchair.

After undergoing extensive rehab at the Shepherd Center in Georgia, Julie Thomas’ sister-in-law got a job at the rehabilitation center, and it’s there the family would like to see Bill Thomas go for rehab once he’s stable enough to be moved.

But the pressures of a mortgage payment, everyday bills and hospital bills are making that difficult. Air ambulances are expensive, and it looks like their insurance will not directly cover that, nor will it cover the entire costs of the rehab Bill is likely to need.

But the community has banded together in support, and Julie Thomas said she’s been receiving prayers, thoughts, help and money from all kinds of people, including those who barely knew her husband.

“One night during a shift change, I was walking around the halls [of the hospital],” she said. “I was so alone, but I thought, ‘I don’t feel like I’m alone.’ So many people have extended help in so many ways; it’s unbelievable.”

On March 28, a silent auction and raffle fundraiser will be held at the Harborside Pavilion. Items include airline tickets, a fishing trip, veterinary services from the Corona del Mar Pet Hospital where Julie Thomas works, salon and restaurant gift certificates and more.

“I’m praying for a miracle,” Julie Thomas said.

“You got that right,” Charlie Thomas added.

For more information, to see photos and to receive updates on Bill Thomas’ condition, go to www.neighborbill.com .