‘IT’S BEYOND A MIRACLE’
Family preps to welcome dad home after long COVID battle
Earlier this year, doctors believed coronavirus would keep Sudbury dad and youth baseball trailblazer Mike Walsh in the hospital for the rest of his days — but this week, he’s coming home.
“It’s beyond a miracle,” Walsh’s wife Laura Semple told the Herald.
Walsh, 58, has battled COVID and complications from the virus since mid-December. He was admitted to Newton-Wellesley hospital with pneumonia-like symptoms just before Christmas. Both he and Laura had been ill for a week and had prepared themselves to spend the holidays apart from their three sons.
“Honestly, we thought he’d be there for just a few days,” Laura remembered.
But on New Year’s Day, Walsh was put on a ventilator, a machine his life would depend on for the next 110 days as he fought complication after complication from the deadly virus in the ICU.
Before his battle with COVID, Walsh was a friendly and familiar face for his Sudbury neighbors.
“He’s like the mayor of our town. He’s very outgoing. He’s the type of guy who, if he’s at a restaurant, he’ll go over and introduce himself to someone,” Laura said.
Outside of his family accounting firm, Walsh’s passion was in the dugout. He passed down his love of baseball to not only his sons, but kids across the Lincoln and Sudbury area.
Walsh served as president of Lincoln-Sudbury Youth Baseball, where he coached more than 1,000 games and fought to improve the town
‘It was a really bizarre feeling. They kept asking me, what’s the date? What day is it? I thought, it must be Jan. 5 or 6, so I kept saying January.’
Little League fields. He added fencing, lights and a warning track, making the Featherland Fields so beautiful that surrounding teams began requesting that Lincoln-Sudbury host tournaments.
“Frankly, Mike is like a second dad to my son,” said fellow Lincoln-Sudbury coach Mike Nobile. “Those kids would run through a wall for him.”
While each of their sons grew up around the baseball diamond, Laura manned the nearby snack stand.
“It was a family thing,” Laura said.
Family was key to Walsh’s survival in the toughest days of his fight against coronavirus. While he was unconscious and breathing through a ventilator, two of his sons — Michael and Zach — took over his CPA firm.
Neither of the young men had experience running a business. Michael, 25, took a leave of absence from law school to help out. In the height of tax season, the firm didn’t lose a single client, the family said.
But in the hospital, the disease took a toll on nearly every part of Walsh’s body. He formed a blood clot and had to have a third of his intestines removed. He suffered a brain bleed and was administered the drug Heparin, but then had an allergic reaction to that medication. His kidneys temporarily failed as the virus ravaged him. All that time, Mike was out cold.
Over the months he stayed in the ICU, his body developed Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a disorder where the immune system attacks nerves, resulting in numbness and loss of coordination.
Then in April, something incredible happened: Mike woke up.
“It was a really bizarre feeling. They kept asking me, what’s the date? What day is it? I thought, it must be Jan. 5 or 6, so I kept saying January,” Walsh told the Herald.
Nurses told him it was in fact April, leaving Walsh with a Rip Van Winkle sensation. He asked who won the Super Bowl and was astonished to hear Tom Brady pulled it off with the Bucs.
“A lot of stuff goes on over three months,” he said.
But he was more bowled over by the overwhelming support from his community and family. He could have never pulled off what his sons did at the firm at their age, he said, and called Sudbury “a pretty special place.”
Walsh was transferred to Cambridge’s Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital weeks ago, where he’s continued his recovery. He’s set to come home Wednesday but his family needs help to prepare for his recovery at home.
Their house will need updates to accommodate Mike’s wheelchair and medical equipment, and he’ll need hired help for his physical therapy and nursing support. His neighbors have set up a fundraising campaign to support the Walsh family.
But there is a light at the end of the tunnel: Doctors told Walsh he could regain use of his limbs in the next year, with a lot of work and determination.
On Wednesday, he’ll start that fight back home.
MIKE WALSH