Thankful for This Season of Life

Although they are used to taking care of others, Pam and Dr. Tim Reynolds recently found themselves in the patients’ chairs while going through a preventative double mastectomy and kidney transplant, respectively

By Lisa Porterfield Thompson

Pam and Dr. Tim Reynolds have dedicated their lives to taking care of others. They have been in emergency medicine and health care for more than 25 years, running an emergency room, working at hospitals, creating a level two trauma center, starting their own businesses, owning an urgent care facility and providing quality health care to people in their most crucial moments of need. So, when the tables turned and Tim and Pam found themselves in the patients’ chairs, it was quite the role reversal to say the least. And it wasn’t the easiest of transitions for either of them. 

On October 17, 2021, Tim and Pam travelled to Boston for a Cowboys versus Patriots NFL game. On the way home from the game, Tim started feeling sick.  “I was very sick,” he recalls. “And I don’t get sick. I felt sort of like I had the flu or something, and that’s completely not normal for me. The symptoms progressed from there, and I eventually found myself considering going to the hospital and looking at my options. I knew I didn’t want to be admitted to the hospital in Boston, so I decided to get home as quickly as I could.” 

When the two arrived home, their son Spencer, who was in his third year of residency at LSU-Shreveport at the time, met them at HealthCARE Express and began caring for Tim.  “We were trying to avoid a hospitalization and going through all the possible causes of me getting sick,” Tim said. “We started researching infectious diseases and illnesses, going through a bunch of testing, and doing bloodwork to rule out various possibilities.”

Pam and Tim during the Pac-12 championship game in Las Vegas during December, the week before Tim went into renal failure.

Tim was sick throughout the rest of October, losing 20 pounds, eventually improving by mid-November.  In the beginning of December, however, his health deteriorated again. Tim and Spencer continued digging for the cause.  On December 13, they decided to do another round of bloodwork and realized his kidney function was off for the first time. That’s when they decided it was time to head to LSU.  Tim, Pam and Spencer headed to the ER in Shreveport with the intention of an overnight stay to determine the underlying cause of his decreased kidney function.  “On December 13, I was making urine normally and by the 15th, I was on dialysis in complete kidney failure,” states Tim. “Within two days I was on dialysis, but up until then, all my bloodwork had been normal, and nothing in my lab results appeared to be wrong. It all happened very quickly.”  What they assumed would be an overnight stay turned into a total of 21 days in the ER and ICU.  

Tim shows his determination to fight during his first dialysis treatment at LSU-Shreveport on December 15.

This was the first time Tim had ever been a patient. In fact, up until this moment, he’d been the picture of resiliency and strength, so for his family, seeing him down and suffering was very difficult. 

Tim was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, the son of a truck driver and a stay-at-home mom, and the oldest of six children. He joined the military when he was 17 and became a Green Beret medic shortly thereafter, serving a total of 17 years between active duty and the Army National Guard. He spent two years living in Guatemala, and then came home to attend college. He attended the University of Utah for his undergraduate work and for medical school but accepted a residency at Baylor Scott-White in Temple, Texas, in emergency medicine, which was what brought him to Texas. 

In 1996, upon finishing residency, he was hired as the medical director for the emergency room at Wadley Regional Medical Center. He worked there for 10 years, bringing the ER up to a level two trauma center. He also met Pam while working there, and the two were married in 2006. 

Pam grew up in North Dakota on a farm. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Education and moved to Texarkana in 1993. She attended nursing school at Southern Arkansas University and began working at Wadley as a registered nurse. Later, Pam earned a master’s degree in Organizational Leadership. She has also been an example of independence and strength for as long as everyone who knows her can remember. So, when she elected to have a preventative double mastectomy in the middle of Tim’s health crisis, it was no surprise.  “It wasn’t a question of if I would get breast cancer,” Pam said, “it was when. So, when I was faced with the decision of electing to have this surgery or not, it was emotional, but it was not difficult.” 

Even though Tim should not have been in a hospital while his immune system was depressed, there was no possible way he wasn’t going to be there to hold hands with Pam on March 25, 2022, just before she headed in for her double mastectomy at UT Southwestern in Dallas.

Pam has a strong familial history of breast cancer, and when her second sister was diagnosed with breast cancer last October, she knew it was time to get serious about the issues she would eventually face.  “My mom has had breast cancer, my sisters have both now been diagnosed, and it was only a matter of time before I was given the same diagnosis,” she said. “It was about the same week that Tim got sick that I requested genetic counseling. These things never happen quickly, so as his health deteriorated, my journey to this preventive surgery progressed. Eventually I had to make a decision, and while there were a lot of reasons I needed to be healthy and needed to be available to care for him, I also realized that I had to fight like hell to stay here, because he was doing the same thing.” 

The day after Tim coded the first time at the hospital was a very heavy day for Tim and Pam, filled with many emotions and prayers.

They both have fought for health over the past year. And both recognize that the journey has been full of blessings and miracles, amid the unimaginably hard days they’ve faced.  “We got through this journey focusing EVERY day on the wins.  I would type out a message to our close friends and family, giving them daily updates on the changes, both good and bad.  I started a habit of ending that message every day with a list of the wins,” explained Pam.  “Some days the wins were harder to pinpoint but they were always there, sometimes well hidden.  Eventually, when it became public knowledge that Tim was so sick, I moved those updates to Facebook so that I wouldn’t have to text the 70-90 people that I was keeping up-to-date daily.  I wondered initially if Facebook was the format to share such intimate details about his health but quickly found out from the overwhelming responses that so many people, from all over the world, were sending him daily prayers and messages BECAUSE they saw it on Facebook.  The wins helped others to see that every day we all have wins.  We just have to look for them.”

Tim was diagnosed with Good Pasture’s Disease, an autoimmune disorder affecting 1 in 1,000,000 people. The disease causes the patient’s body to develop antibodies that attack the patient’s own kidneys, and 60% of the time, the antibodies attack the lungs as well. Fortunately for Tim, his lungs were not affected.  “Treatment is far worse than the disease itself,” Tim said. “It requires plasma infusions 7 times over 14 days, chemotherapy, and in my case, a kidney transplant. I knew from the testing on my kidney function and research I’d done on the disease that there was a 15% chance my kidney would recover, but in my case, it didn’t look like that was going to happen. I realized while I was still in the ICU that I’d need a kidney transplant.” 

This happened about the same time that Pam was meeting with her surgeon in Dallas, and in a magical turn of events, the surgeon would end up asking why Tim hadn’t accompanied Pam to her appointment, and the two would go on to discuss Tim’s current medical issues and need for a kidney transplant. The surgeon Pam was visiting, Dr. Sumeet Teotia, had connections at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix as he had been on the kidney transplant team, and got Tim into the transplant program almost immediately. Most people wait an extended period to be placed on the list, but this blessing expedited the process for Tim and Pam. 

In another flurry of blessings, once the two made it public that Tim would need a transplant, 37 people stepped up and volunteered to donate a kidney. The team at Mayo was shocked.  “It’s incredible and humbling that 37 people offered to help me in my time of need,” Tim said. “But my friend and former Green Beret teammate, Kevin Rasband, was the first to step up, and miraculously, he was a match.” 

Tim and Kevin Rasband the day before the transplant at Mayo Phoenix. They were in Special Forces together where Kevin served as the commo guy, and Tim was the medic.

The Reynolds wish that more people knew that kidney donation was a crucial need in our society.  “Any healthy human being can donate a kidney,” Pam said. “It’s such a heartbreaking thing to see all the kidney patients who need a transplant but there aren’t enough donors.” 

On July 26, 2022, Kevin Rasband gave Tim a kidney, and the initial transplant surgery went well.  “I thought that was going to be it,” Tim said. “Everything went great, and I expected to get back to healing right away, but as it turns out, the time after the transplant surgery would prove to be rather difficult, too.” 

The surgeons had to go back in and do an emergency surgery while Tim was still in the recovery room because the kidney quit working.  The venous blood flow out of Tim’s new kidney had been occluded, and it caused his kidney to stop functioning.  Because the initial surgery had so many new incision sites, the blood flow started leaking into Tim’s abdomen which caused additional issues for him.  He received four units of blood during this second surgery due to the huge amount of blood loss.  Additionally, during this second surgery, the retractor they were using to hold the incision open was sitting on Tim’s femoral nerve, and when he woke up after surgery, his leg was paralyzed. 

When Tim woke up from the second surgery, he had lost function of his right leg and was unable to walk for several weeks without use of a walker. At 12 weeks post op, he is now able to control his leg better and has been walking unassisted for several weeks. This photo was taken during his first walk around the nurses station. This was a completely unexpected outcome of the surgery and definitely created a huge setback to Tim’s overall recovery.

Luckily, this was not a permanent paralysis, but it has required extensive physical therapy and patience from Tim. He now has regained approximately 80% use of his leg. 

The road to recovery is slow, but Tim is progressing well. As for Pam, she had one more surgery to knock off in her journey to wellness to address a shoulder and bicep injury.  That surgery took place in May, after her mastectomy and before her breast reconstruction surgeries.  “We were very intentional about scheduling every procedure so we could be there for each other, and I could help when I was needed,” Pam said. “I’m thankful to all my surgeons and healthcare providers for working with us to make this year as comfortable as possible.” 

The Reynolds have stayed busy focusing on recovery, and also managing the day-to-day of their businesses when they were able and trusting their team when they were not. “We have an incredible group of people working for us,” Tim said. “They are excellent leaders and capable of doing their jobs at a high level. We are very fortunate to have them each in what we call our dysfunctional family.”

After an emergency surgery, two more unexpected hospitalizations at Mayo, and being unable to walk without a walker, the words, “You two can head back to Texas and we will see you in four months” were better than any words Tim and Pam had heard in 10 months!

Turns out, family is something that Tim and Pam are very thankful for in this season of life.  “All of our kids are grown now, and each of them is  involved in the business in some way, or at least it seems like that’s the direction it’s headed,” Tim said. “Spencer works for us at HealthCARE Express and splits his time with the hospital.  Brock manages our real estate businesses and spent six years at HealthCARE Express.  Natalie lives in San Antonio and finished a residency in emergency medicine in July.  Austin is 27 and in his third year of medical school at Sam Houston State University, and Sydney is a graduate of the University of Arkansas and runs our educational company, Dr. Tim International.” 

Each of the children were involved in the medical journey their parents have been on this past year.  “They were so supportive throughout the whole thing,” Tim said. “They visited me daily, we spent Christmas together in the hospital, they called to check on me, and helped me every way they could.  

On September 2, Tim and Pam drove back onto their ranch in Texas. There was a huge sign with little notes from family, friends and team members with amazing outpourings of love and laughter. Laughter and prayers certainly played a large role in healing for both Tim and Pam.

“I also want to say how thankful I am for Spencer and what he did for me,” Tim said. “I’ll never be able to repay him for the way he cared for me, and how he was deeply involved in making medical decisions for me. He was in his third year of residency, which is stressful all on its own, but he never left the hospital while I was there. I was never alone. If he wasn’t working a shift in the ER, he was upstairs by my side.” 

Tim has written a book, “Living Every Minute:  Dr. Tim’s Pillars for Creating a Spectacular Life.”  Additionally, he has designed and teaches a 3-day course for men (Gladiator) and for women (Valkyrie) to show them how to create the life they choose.  He plans on writing his second book to inspire those struggling with medical issues and/or significant life setbacks. “It’s important to me that I share the knowledge that I have gained in this lifetime to help serve others, to help them to get through their struggles and over the obstacles that life throws their way,” Tim said. 

Tim and Pam admit that things are changing in their life, for the better it seems, when it comes to managing a work-life balance.  “I never imagined that we’d have a second-generation business,” Tim said. “But here we are, in a time of transition with all of our adult children helping or headed back to help with one of the businesses. How fortunate is that?” 

Last year’s Reynolds Thanksgiving was a great time for the entire family. Pictured are: (seated) Sydney, Pam, Tim and Natalie; (standing) Austin, Brock and Spencer. 

The Reynolds are looking ahead to what the future holds and realizing that it may look different than what they had always imagined.  “We’re in a transition,” Tim said, “and it’s not a transition I ever thought I’d have.  I’m turning 60 in November. We’ve travelled to 65 countries on 7 continents, spent our summers in Jackson Hole and have a home in Belize, and now it’s time to think about what really matters. We are refocusing, replanning, and making decisions about what we want the next decade to look like. If I could give anyone any advice that I’ve learned from all of this, it’s that you need to live right now. You never know, you may never retire — I almost didn’t.”