Say Yes To The Dress — And A Walk Down The Aisle

By Nancy K. Crevier

A special story featuring a Newtown bride will be featured late in 2012 or early 2013, on the TLC channel “Say Yes To The Dress” program. It is a thrill to be highlighted on one of her favorite programs, said Caitlin Romelli, but she wishes that the circumstances that made her event newsworthy were otherwise.

Every father dreams of the day he walks his daughter down the aisle. For Newtown resident Bob Collier, that vision became the carrot on the stick that helped him master months of painful rehabilitation, struggling to recover from neck down paralysis, caused by sudden onset Guillain-Barre Syndrome. On May 12, 2012, exactly one year after he was airlifted from Roanoke Hospital in Virginia to Danbury Hospital, unconscious, breathing with a ventilator, and utterly unable to move, Mr Collier offered his arm to his daughter Caitlin, leaned into a tall walker, and proceeded down the aisle of St Marguerite Bourgeoys in Brookfield.

He handed his daughter over to the groom at the altar, and turning around to find his seat by his wife, Mary Beth, Mr Collier realized that the processional music had stopped and there was complete silence in the church. “What are you looking at?” he loudly asked. His answer was cheers and clapping.

As happy as the guests were to attend the wedding of Caitlin Collier and Keith Romelli, they were thrilled to see Mr Collier on his feet.

The walk down the aisle was longer than could be measured in feet for Caitlin and Keith. Original plans called for a July 16, 2011, wedding date. But on April 15, 2011, Guillain-Barre Syndrome changed the lives of the Collier family and put the wedding on hold.

The last thing Mr Collier remembers of that date is returning to his Roanoke, Va., hotel room after a dinner with business associates while traveling for IBM, and calling the front desk with a request that they call 911. That call was preceded by an evening of what he thought was food poisoning – vomiting and dry heaving, followed by a feeling he could only describe as “Just not right.” Six weeks later, in a hospital room in Danbury, he regained consciousness.

Much of what happened in those six weeks, he found out later from friends and family. Emergency responders to the hotel room found Mr Collier barely able to breathe. He was put on life support in the ambulance. At the hospital, he was still able to speak, somewhat nonsensically, before his vocal and all motor skills shut down. What he told them, was that they should not call home — “I guess I told them, ‘My daughter’s bridal shower is tomorrow. Don’t call them,’” said Mr Collier, 16 months after the event. In his briefcase, his family later found a pair of sparkly Tom’s shoes that he planned to give Caitlin to wear at her shower.

“I love sparkly shoes, and my dad had picked them up on his business trip for me,” said Caitlin.

The Roanoke hospital did ignore his request, and Mary Beth Collier, a nurse at Danbury Hospital, received a call that sent her flying to her husband’s side.

“I got this weird call from my mom, that dad was in the hospital in Virginia, not to worry. I couldn’t figure out what was up,” said Caitlin. The whole shower was surreal, she said, without her mother and one sister, who had also traveled to Virginia, and a feeling that she really ought to be worried. It was not until she was driving back to her New Jersey home that her mother finally told her that her father was on life support and that no one knew what was wrong.

“Luckily for me, it was spring break from the school in Brooklyn where I was teaching, so I went home, threw some clothes in a suitcase and flew to Roanoke immediately,” Caitlin said. The sparkling silver Tom’s shoes became her trademark footwear as she paced the halls at the hospital.

Guillan-Barre Syndrome (GBS) was not top on the list of what physicians thought was wrong with Mr Collier. The initial suspect was food poisoning, possibly botulism, as four other people who had been at the dinner party at the restaurant had become ill overnight, although not to the extent of Mr Collier’s symptoms. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta actually closed the steak house down for three days to scrutinize the operation, Mr Collier learned.

“My dad was in great health up till then,” said Caitlin. “He ran marathons in his 50s, and he is in the Boston College Hall of Fame for lacrosse and rugby,” she said.

“I do have Type 1 diabetes, which is under control, but I was completely healthy,” agreed Mr Collier. “Nothing stopped me.”

Guillan-Barre Syndrome is an autoimmune disorder, in which a person’s own antibodies attack the myelin sheath around the nerves. Nerve damage causes muscle weakness or paralysis. There is no known cause for the disorder, although the onset sometimes follows a minor infection. One in 100,000 people are diagnosed in the US each year with Guillan-Barre Syndrome, according to information from the US National Library of Medicine.

What was puzzling doctors in Mr Collier’s case was the unusual onset of the disorder.

“Apparently, usual GBS onset is slower, and from the legs up. Mine was from the neck down, and worsened extremely quickly,” Mr Collier said.

At the end of the first week that her father was hospitalized and still unresponsive, Caitlin realized that the wedding would need to be postponed. Putting the brakes on the event, just a few weeks off, turned out to be manageable, thanks to the understanding of most of the vendors she had hired.

“I called Candlewood Inn, and they were extremely accommodating,” she said. Oddly enough, the young man who assisted the family at Candlewood turned out to be the son of Mr Collier’s nurse, once he was transferred to Danbury Hospital in May. Caitlin and Keith set the new date for May 12, 2012. “I was sure he would be absolutely fine by then,” she said.

In most cases, 80 percent of those afflicted by GBS recover fully within six months. Mr Collier’s case, it turned out, was much more severe. Fortunately for the family, one doctor in Roanoke suspected GBS and recommended plasmapheresis, in which a patient’s blood is removed, cleansed of antibodies, and returned to the body. It is a treatment not without complications, but without it, GBS victims may not fully recover. The family decided it was worth the risk, and the gamble paid off when the diagnosis of GBS was made.

Even when he regained consciousness in Danbury Hospital, he was not able to communicate, although he could understand what was being said. It was a difficult thing to wrap his mind around, said Mr Collier. He could not imagine then that it would be weeks before he could speak again, or that he would spend the next nine months on a ventilator, or being fed through a tube in his stomach. It was not until after he was transferred to Gaylord Rehabilitation Center in Wallingford, in June 2011, before he could even get out of bed and begin weeks more of painful physical therapy.

No More Postponements

As the family watched and waited for positive progress, Caitlin had other bridal plans to rearrange. She had purchased her dress the year before the original wedding date, at Kleinfeld’s Bridal Salon in New York City, the center stage for the popular television series Say Yes To The Dress. When she told the staff about her dilemma, they assured her that delaying the fittings would not be a problem; however, she could not store the dress any longer at the bridal salon.

“They told me I had to pick up my dress, and they told me how to store it, wrapped in a white sheet, at home,” said Caitlin.

By the time March 2012 rolled around, a still greatly compromised Mr Collier was released from Gaylord Rehabilitation Center. The weeks of relentless physical therapy, pool therapy, and electrical stimulation allowed him to get into a special, tall walker and take a few steps.

“I knew then that I would be able to walk Caitlin down the aisle,” said Mr Collier. “There was no way I was going down the aisle in May in a wheelchair,” he said.

March 2012 was also time for Caitlin to return to Kleinfeld’s with her dress, for her fitting. “I did consider postponing once again, about three months before. I worried it would be too much extra stress at a stressful time,” she said. But with her father putting his (walker) foot down, the family decided a happy event would be a good thing for everybody, and the plans went forward. Caitlin found herself carrying her gown into Kleinfeld’s, still wrapped in the white sheet.

“Someone came up to me and asked if I’d bought the dress there, and wondered why it was wrapped up in a sheet,” she said. When she quickly explained about the postponement, suddenly a TLC representative was at her side, asking if she would be filmed for the show. “They taped the show on the spot, and then they taped the second fitting,” she said, “and the wedding, too!”

Being on Say Yes To The Dress was a dream come true for Caitlin, and May 12, 2012 turned out to be what one weather station called a top-ten day of the year, said Caitlin. But even more glorious to the bride than the weather was having her dad well enough to give her away on her wedding day, and sharing that first dance with him.

There are many people to thank for helping him reach that goal, said Mr Collier.

“Monsignor Bob and Father Luke from St Rose visited me several times when I was at Gaylord, and our friend, Dr John Murphy, who is also the president and CEO of Danbury Hospital, would bring me Holy Water from Lourdes and sprinkle it on my legs when I was in the hospital. The therapists would do a countdown with me to the wedding day, to get me moving. My family helped me get through this. I don’t think there was a day — outside of a couple days during that October storm — that Mary Beth didn’t come. She took a six-month leave of absence from the hospital,” he said.

Mr Collier still has a way to go. He has no feeling in his fingers, nor much ability to use his hands. He continues to have no feeling below his knees. Still, he considers himself to be a lucky man to have a diagnosis of GBS.

“I have something,” said Mr Collier, “that most people recover from.”

He continues with therapy, and with the wedding behind them, Mr Collier has set a new goal.

“By Christmas, I want to be able to walk across a room without any gadgets,” he declared. It is a goal that Caitlin is certain he will achieve.