Support Michael's Long Road to Recovery

I'm Andrea Salcido (DeLorge), Michael Salcido's first born of three children and only daughter.

On July 25th, my middle brother Andrew, went to my parent's house at about 9AM at the request of my mother. She was visiting with me and her grandchildren in the Dallas area and had been unable to contact my dad since the previous evening. Unfortunately, my brother found my Dad "asleep" in his bed. He was half dressed, had two black eyes, and was bleeding from both of his ears. There were pools of blood and vomit all throughout the room. My brother was able to wake my father up, although he describes him as being "awake but no one was behind the wheel". With my brother's assistance, my father was miraculously able to walk to the car where they headed to the hospital. He was very briefly treated at Sierra (a smaller hospital) but they determined he needed specialty trauma care and was taken by ambulance to UMC (the main county hospital). He was immediately scanned, placed into a medically induced coma, and rushed into emergency neurosurgery where his entire forehead was removed to allow his brain to swell. It was determined that he suffered a significant blow to the front of his head. We don't know what happened and most likely never will. The possibility of an attack was briefly considered, but it has been ruled out. The best we have been able to estimate is that there was probably about 12 hours between his injury and finding him.

He spent around 5 days in a coma and then took another 2 days to begin to open his eyes. He stayed in the ICU for almost 2 weeks. While there, his head was severely swollen, he needed a blood transfusion, had high fever, and contracted pneumonia. Once he recovered, he spent another several weeks in the hospital before he was released. His forehead was reattached on October 31st. Since then, my father has been transferred to 6 different locations including a nursing home, in and out of the the hospital, a rehab center, an LTAC facility and back home. He has fought multiple infections, surgeries, sores, and various other complications and setbacks. He most recently overcame a severe case of pneumocephalus where air seeping into his skull took up about a 1/3 of the space in his cranial cavity that should have been occupied by his brain. This caused major pressure on his brain and put him into an almost comatose state where he spent 23+ hours a day asleep.

Right now, my mother acts as his nurse and caretaker at home. He is still on a feeding tube, is bedridden, and doesn't speak. This February, over 6 months after his initial accident, my dad is finally well enough to start rehab. Therapists will be coming to the house where my dad will receive 20 hrs/week of combined PT, OT and speech therapy. This will continue for the foreseeable future until he has made enough progress and has the stamina to be transferred to a long-term rehab facility, where he will have to be able to withstand 6 hrs/day doing therapy.

Michael was born and raised in El Paso. He graduated from Cathedral High School and earned both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees from UTEP. Before retiring, he worked as a state trooper, English teacher and high school assistant principal. My Dad suffered from social anxiety and was not close to many people, but to those friends and family who he was close to, he loved them fiercely, especially his grandchildren. I say this in the past tense because although my father is still here, he is not the same person he once was.

Over the years, my mother, ever the caretaker, has always been the type of person to jump in and help. She took care of her sick and aging mother, father and in-laws, she helps to care for her brother with severe Parkinson's, she has flown to friend's and family's homes to house sit, baby sit, dog sit or to help them recover from surgery, childbirth or illness; all while asking nothing in return. Although she does have extended family in town, her immediate family, my two brothers and I, all live 9 hrs away so she is mostly on her own.

My parents need your help. My father needs the proper care to be able to get some of his life back and my mother has to have the right support and supplies to be able to get him there. Even before the accident, they were living on a fixed retirement income and didn't have much to spare. The medical bills are piling up and will continue to do so for who knows how long. Please consider donating to help lift some of the financial burden off my parents. God bless you for reading my father's story and thank you for your consideration.

With love,

Andrea