Matt Small, 'sickest person in Ireland,' returns home to Levittown

After a three-month ordeal in which he nearly died from sepsis in Ireland, Matt Small returned home to Levittown on Friday amid family, friends, and motorcycles.

A roaring guard of some 40 bikes, led by a flashing, wailing police escort, brought him and family through the Five Points intersection, down Woodbourne Road and into the Quincy Hollow section, where he lives with his parents, Greg and Sandra, and his younger brother, Mark.

Friends and neighbors gathered in front of the house on Quickset Road in Middletown, embraced Matt and welcomed him back in a remarkable rebound for a man who at one point was hours from death as he lay unconscious in a Dublin ICU ward.

The trip to Ireland was intended as a ten-day Christmas visit with family in Mayo. But it turned grim when Matt couldn’t shake cold symptoms which left him nearly unable to breathe by New Year’s Eve.

“Normal cold symptoms. You know, stuff that wasn’t something to be worried about,” Matt said, sitting beneath a wall of family photos in his living room.

When over-the-counter medicines didn’t knock out the cold, his symptoms grew worse, and he began having a tough time breathing. His mother drove him to a local clinic, then to a hospital ER in Castlebar. His condition quickly deteriorated.

“Sitting in the emergency room it was hard to breathe, like someone was pushing on my chest and I was laboring, and my fingers started turning blue,” he said.

He was taken for evaluation, then sedated, then transferred to a Dublin hospital. After sedation, his memory is blank.

“I don’t remember anything until waking up in Dublin four weeks later,” he said. “Waking up in Dublin, it felt like it maybe had been a couple hours.”

In January, doctors told his parents that he was listed with the state health service as “the sickest person in Ireland.”

First account of Matt Small's ordeal Levittown man, 21, stricken on family trip, fights for his life in Dublin ICU as 'sickest person in Ireland'

As it happened Matt Small, improving, says first word since falling critically ill in Ireland, 'Hello'

Greg and Sandra Small took turns keeping bedside vigils.

“I called work and I said it looks like I’m going to be in Ireland for the foreseeable future,” said Greg Small, a Falls Township police detective.

The department gave him as much time as he needed, he said.

Sandra announced the stunning turn of events on her Facebook page, and kept family, friends and neighbors informed with a daily diary. She kept the account so Matt would know the day-to-day details of the ordeal and the heroic efforts Irish medical teams employed to save his life.

Sepsis is a pernicious disease, and as soon as one virus is tamed and contained, another pops up.

“These doctors were literally in a lab every day developing (antibacterial) medicines from cultures,” Sandra said.

Matt said he read his mother's diary entries, and it’s the well wishes and emotional support in the social media comments that touched him most.

“People back home who don’t know me, people in Ireland. Just very emotional,” he said.

In January, he turned 21 while under sedation and has no recollection of the staff singing him happy birthday. When he woke up, his first word was “Hello” and he asked for a blue slushy. (He finally got one a few days before departing Ireland).

In the month he was sedated, he recalls a strange twilight world, where darkness was interrupted by snippets of life and death.

“Like they were commercial breaks, is the best way I can describe it,” he said.

Most of the dream-like visions were of ordinary life.

“Like sitting in a college class, or waiting in line for gas,” he said.

But some were macabre.

“Like attending my own funeral, like you’re in your own casket and you can’t move,” he said.

He attributes the darker visions to his sub-conscious dealing with pent-up anxiety, and his helplessness to control it.

“There was no way for me to vent it off,” he said. “If I was awake, and I was anxious, I could go to the gym, ride my bike, do something.”

Sandra said that when she would visit and talk to him or have a conversation with the medical staff, devices tracking his vitals would flux, a sign that, on some level, he heard and recognized his mother’s voice.

At some points, Sandra said, when his sedation was lighter, bedside conversations had to be guarded. One day, a nurse informed her that Matt needed to be placed into deeper sleep.

“She told me that it won’t have an adverse effect, and she said, ‘It’ll take two to three minutes and he’ll be gone.’ Meaning he’ll be gone deeper in sedation. He actually heard that, and when he heard ‘gone’ he thought, ‘I’m dying. I’m going to be gone in two to three minutes.’ Afterward, the nurses agreed it’s a good learning point, because you have to be aware of what you say in those situations.”

Matt, a graduate of the Bucks County Technical High School and Bucks County Community College, is employed as a graphic designer in Levittown. He said his company is holding open his job until he returns, pending medical evaluations. There should be no long-lasting health effects.

“That’s a good thing,” said his father. “It’s mostly because of his youth and he’s in such good physical shape.”

Matt, who is 6 feet tall, weighed about 200 pounds prior to falling ill. He lost 50 pounds while hospitalized, he said. A dedicated motorcycle rider, he went outside and fired up his Harley, revved it a few times, and rolled it back into its shelter.

It’s a heavy bike, and he’ll have to build his leg strength back so he can roll it backward up the driveway, engine off, so not to disturb the Smalls’ neighbors when he comes home late.

“He gets credit from our neighbors for doing that,” Greg Small said.

Every cop knows how fragile human life can be. And as he watched his son embraced by friends and neighbors, Greg Small said: “There are two things I need. First, a drink. Second, when we were over there, my sister-in-law gave me a Cuban cigar for Christmas, which I planned to smoke on New Year’s. Well, that didn’t happen. So today I will.”

After the crowd had gone, he sat alone outside his front door, appearing relieved and content, and smoked the cigar on the cold, sunny spring afternoon.

JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: 'Sickest person in Ireland', returns home to Levittown amid family, friends