Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 7, 1991 TAG: 9102080335
SECTION: NEIGHBORS PAGE: S-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETSY BIESENBACH/ SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
But for Keith Kuelz of Salem, it was no dream, and the impact came with bone-crushing reality.
On Sept. 29, 1987, Kuelz survived a six-story fall from a hotel window in Kyong Jou, South Korea. Engineers at the General Electric Drive Systems plant, where he is employed, estimated that he was traveling at a speed of 40 miles an hour when he hit a roof over the hotel's entrance.
Both of Kuelz' ankles were crushed, and the bones of his right leg pierced his foot. A vertebra in his back was broken and another in his neck was compressed. He also suffered internal injuries and a deep cut over his left eye.
Kuelz, now 30, was in Korea as a technical adviser to a steel mill that was installing new equipment manufactured by GE. Kuelz, a Roanoke native, has worked for GE since 1986, when he graduated from Virginia Tech with a degree in electrical engineering.
The night he fell from the window, he said, he had just come back from having dinner with a friend and an official from the steel mill.
The air conditioning in his hotel room wasn't working, so he and the friend sat on the window sill, trying to keep cool while enjoying the view.
Kuelz sat with both feet on the sill. Later, when he shifted his weight in what he called a "careless moment," he overbalanced. There was nothing to hold onto, and he fell.
For an instant, he said, he caught himself, but he lost his grip. His friend tried to grab him, but he slipped out of his hands. But Kuelz stopped himself from falling head first. Otherwise, he said, he would not have survived.
Kuelz said he does not remember much about the fall itself, but witnesses said he was conscious and crying out: "It hurts! It hurts!"
Kuelz was taken to a clinic in nearby Pohang, where he was examined and later sent by ambulance to the university hospital at Seoul, a five-hour drive away.
Doctors at that hospital operated on his ankles, but GE officials decided to bring Kuelz to the United States for treatment for the back injuries. The Korean doctors could have performed the operation, Kuelz said, but the post-operative care he would receive in the States would be better.
Doctors stabilized his back by encasing him in a plaster cast that went from his armpits to his knees. A 3-foot board was put between his knees to keep his legs apart. With the cast, Kuelz, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall, weighed more than 300 pounds. He was too big to fit on any available commercial air ambulance.
So with the help of an aide of Rep. Jim Olin, D-Roanoke, Kuelz was put on a military cargo plane and flown to Richmond.
Emil Kuelz went to Korea to bring his son back and was on the plane with him.
From Richmond, Kuelz was taken to the University of Virginia Hospital in Charlottesville to begin the long process of recovery.
"The pain was so awful nothing could touch it," he said. The lowest point during his recovery came when doctors discovered an infection in his foot. The bacterium causing the infection was indigenous to Korea and unknown in the United States. Kuelz had to be put in quarantine.
"I couldn't go out of the room. I had no diversions. I was sick and lonely, and I cried a lot."
Although he was given morphine, Kuelz said, "the only way to beat the pain was with my mind. My mother would sit with me, and I would describe beaches that I had seen and been on all over the world. I'd tell her what they looked like, how they smelled, what the water felt like. I would lose myself in my vision."
He was released from the hospital in June 1988, and returned to work. Eighteen months after his fall, he said, he still felt constant pain, caused by the infection in his right foot. Every movement hurt, and co-workers said he had become emotionally withdrawn.
In February 1990, his doctors decided the foot would have to be amputated.
"I could never accept the fact that the foot would not heal itself," he said. "I always expected my body to be whole again."
The amputation was so traumatic for Kuelz that he felt compelled to hold a funeral for the foot. After a lot of work, his mother managed to persuade the hospital to give her the foot. She made a coffin for it, and Kuelz bought a burial plot at a cemetery in Northwest Roanoke. No one except his mother and girlfriend, who suggested the burial, understood why he had to do it until after it was over.
"Burying the foot made me accept the fact that my body would not be whole again. It was a time of realization for me."
The loss of the foot was a turning point for Kuelz. Although he didn't know it at the time, he said, "it was the best thing I could have done."
His co-workers said the "real Keith" returned, and that he has become as outgoing and gregarious as he was before the accident.
His left foot was surgically broken and reconstructed in September. Once it heals, his foot should function well enough to allow him to stand for long periods of time, although "it will never act normal."
Since the right leg has been fitted with a prosthetic, Kuelz has bought a motorcycle and even tried water skiing. And his golf game has improved.
He has tried playing wheelchair basketball and tennis, but his goal is to stay out of the chair. He hopes to be able to play softball in a regular league with the company team this spring.
"It's been a real challenge for me not to be a handicapped person. I try to make an effort to do things people say I can't do." If it hurts, he said "I try that much harder. I'm not going to become docile."
Although he knows he will never be free of pain, Kuelz hopes to go on with his life as he would have had the accident never happened. After the left foot is rehabilitated, he said, he wants to return to work in the field.
Despite all he's been through, he said, he feels he hasn't really changed. "I've always been pretty happy-go-lucky," he said.
by CNB