Homeless, Steve, 37, was in a coma for 10 months after elective weight-loss surgery two years earlier in Columbia, Mo.
“The doctor said I was fine. He says, ‘You can go home.’ So I went home, and I just could not eat nothing. Everything I ate I threw back up. I started throwing up blood.” He went to the Blessing Hospital emergency room and was then flown back to Columbia for emergency treatment. “By the time I got to Columbia I had already done died on the helicopter twice before I got there. …
“By some God-awful miracle, or some higher being in this world deciding I shouldn’t die, I don’t know, I mean it was just weird. It’s just you going into a coma, and you only think you’ve been asleep for a day, but it’s been 10 months. You’re just like, ‘Okay, where did all my life just go for almost 10 months straight?’ It was just weird, you know?”
Steve’s sister took him in, but then her landlord said there wasn’t enough room in the apartment for his sister to care for him. For a time, they moved from hotel to hotel. Eventually, things didn’t work out with his sister so Steve went to the Salvation Army.
“They took me in and helped me out by getting me some clothes and stuff. Then basically I’ve been homeless and bouncing here to there, but you got to do what you got to do to survive. You really do. It’s hard, but they say only the tough survive. There’s got to be some truth to that.”