Gold Bar man became so sick, so fast

Misty Zoutte doesn’t know if her husband can hear her or feel her, but she’s there to hold his hand, to talk to him, to pray.

For 26 days she’s sat in a chair by her husband Cory’s side.

The Gold Bar woman doesn’t know what caused her husband to get sick. Neither do his doctors.

All she knows is that four weeks ago, her 38-year-old husband was healthy, fine, normal.

He woke up one morning with a chest cold. Two days later, the father of four nearly died.

Today, he struggles for life, heavily sedated at the Providence Regional Medical Center Everett campus on Colby Avenue.

Misty Zoutte struggles to get through one day at a time.

The Zouttes first met through friends in Spokane, then went their separate ways. She moved to this side of the mountains, married, had two children, Miranda and Jordan, and divorced. He worked in Spokane and had a son, Donald. When the two reconnected eight years ago, they knew it was right.

He wanted to move to the area.

"I told him, ‘You can stay at my house.’ He never left."

They settled into life and added their girl to the family. Misty Zoutte remembers the frantic, fast drive to the hospital on a snowy, winter night, the labor, her husband holding her hand through the contractions. He would rub her pregnant belly and say how he couldn’t wait to meet his baby girl. Their daughter Madison, born early the morning of Jan. 1, 2004, was the first baby of the year in Monroe.

Misty Zoutte describes her husband as quiet, reserved, the kind of man you have to get to know before he opens up. He’s a loving dad, she says, with a special relationship with their now 4-year-old girl. He’s the only one she’ll let wash her hair.

Every year, he takes a hunting trip with family. He loves old cars and enjoys tinkering on a ‘67 Mustang in the garage. He cleans air ducts for a Redmond company. It’s work he enjoys.

By all accounts, Cory Zoutte was living an ordinary family life when it happened.

The first sign of trouble came when Cory Zoutte told his wife he couldn’t get motivated on a Sunday morning.

The family lives in a tight, 1,100-square-foot home. In his spare time, Cory Zoutte was building another bedroom onto their home.

"I feel like I’m getting sick," he told his wife over coffee.

A deep, thick, dry cough worsened throughout that day, Oct. 26.

By dinnertime, Cory Zoutte was curled on the couch, not eating.

The next day, Misty Zoutte had to leave early to get to Redmond for her job planning cruises and trips for a time-share company.

She called him early to tell him to go to the doctor if he got worse. He was already at the clinic.

"I’ll call you when I’m done," he told her.

The call never came.

At the Monroe clinic, staff members decided he needed to go to the hospital. He couldn’t breathe well enough to walk across the street to Valley General. Misty Zoutte rushed to the hospital, where she found him sitting up in bed. They liked to kid each other and they found themselves laughing and joking about his hospital stay.

"Boy, you really one-upped me on this one," said Misty Zoutte, who had a slight cold.

A doctor told her they would move her husband into the intensive care unit overnight as a precautionary measure. She went home to spend the night with their children.

His lungs were filling with fluid and by 1 a.m. hospital staff put him on life support. The next morning, doctors recommended transferring him to Providence.

He almost didn’t survive the drive.

A doctor told her that her husband might not live.

"It’s been up and down ever since," she says. "We still don’t know what’s wrong with him."

Misty Zoutte rises at 5 a.m. She pulls on comfortable clothes, makes coffee and rouses the kids. At 6 a.m. she catches a 50-minute ride with her father to Providence. She stays into the evening. Her job is on hold. She wonders what’s going to happen when his paychecks stop coming but she doesn’t dwell on it. She knows a spot in the critical care unit costs $10,000 a day and that’s without extra fees for doctors and medications. The cost of his care has already hit a half-million dollars. Cory Zoutte’s insurance is picking up most, but not all, of the costs. His company has done what it can.

"They told me as far as they were concerned, he was still employed there," Misty Zoutte says. "The owner donated two weeks of paid leave."

Still, she doesn’t know how long that will last. Her son, Jordan, 15, who runs his own vending machine business, is worried about the family finances.

"He has become quite the little man of the house," she says. "He wants to help me pay the bills."

She was a mess the first few days. Always the family organizer, she finds she can’t plan this, can’t anticipate what’s coming next. She comes home with eyes swollen and red from crying. She notices the effect on her children and decides to stay positive.

"Since I’ve pulled it together, they’ve pulled it together," she says.

Madison doesn’t understand. She wants to talk to Daddy, so Misty Zoutte holds the phone up to his ear so Madison can talk. She tells him about day care and how she dressed as a fairy godmother for Halloween and a picture of a cutout heart that she colored.

Now, that heart hangs at the foot of Cory Zoutte’s bed.

The staff at Providence are trying to learn what could have made a healthy man in his prime so sick, so fast. Doctors have run every test imaginable, including for the flu and hantavirus. They found a complex stew of bugs in his lungs, including MRSA, a difficult-to-treat bacterium.

"People don’t realize how at risk we are for things in the environment, and the other hand, we can’t be germophobes," says Liz Torrence, a registered nurse who manages the critical care unit at Providence. "Why Cory got sick at this time we don’t understand."

The unit is a busy, bustling place where nurses and doctors monitor some of the sickest patients in the hospital. Heart rates bleep on a computer screen. Big glass windows give staff a constant view of their patients. Cory Zoutte’s room is in the back. Tubes snake down his throat. Machines do the necessary work of running his body.

He’s heavily sedated so his body doesn’t work against the machines, Torrence explains.

In Cory Zoutte’s nearly monthlong stay in the hospital, his kidneys have stopped working and blood clots have developed in his right arm and both legs. Six specialists are monitoring him. Doctors know Cory Zoutte’s lungs filled with fluid and he developed pneumonia, which turned into acute respiratory distress syndrome, an often-fatal reaction to lung infection. At any time, about one-fourth of the beds in the critical care unit are filled with people with some stage of the same syndrome, Torrence says. His condition has plateaued, Torrence says, and all they can do is wait.

"He is still very, very sick," she says. "We just have to wait and see. This is such a tenuous disease. Sometimes we see people sicker than him survive."

The doctors and nurses tell Misty Zoutte it’s going to be a long haul.

She just wants him healed and home.

"At first I wanted him home for Thanksgiving," she says. "Now, hopefully he’ll be home for Christmas."

Reporter Debra Smith: 425-339-3197 or dsmith@heraldnet.com.