After illness takes him away from ministry, priest welcomes opportunity to serve others

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
April 26, 2007

FORT DODGE - Health problems brought on by a neuromuscular disease that caused atrophy of the muscles forced Father Tim Fitzgerald in 2004 to give up what he truly loved - ministry as a pastor. While it was difficult for him to leave parish life, he eventually adjusted to a new form of pastoral ministry in his work as a chaplain at the Marian Home in Fort Dodge.

Life changed even more drastically for Father Fitzgerald in the last year when additional health problems nearly killed him and took him away from priestly ministry altogether for several months.

In early January of 2006, he came down with pneumonia. His neuromuscular disease, myotonic dystrophy, added complications to the respiratory problems and his condition quickly became very serious.

"They told my family that I would die - told them to prepare for a funeral," said the 43-year-old priest.

He was on life support for a while and his heart stopped several times. They even put him into a drug-induced coma in an attempt to reduce the Code Blues. The priest was in the hospital for 17 days in Fort Dodge before he was transferred to a hospital in Omaha that specialized in respiratory problems. For several weeks he was in and out of intensive care and it was there that they added a feeding tube.

"I told my family I wanted to go home," said Father Fitzgerald.

From Omaha he went to a hospital in Ames, so he would be closer to relatives. He was hospitalized in Ames until May 15, tallying over five months in the hospital.

It was a very depressing time for Father Fitzgerald. He wasn't able to eat on his own and couldn't speak. One doctor even had mentioned that the priest had brain damage.

By mid-May he moved in with his sister, Maureen Hollingsworth of Boone, who is a healthcare worker. Maureen is the only one of the four siblings who does not have the neuromuscular disease.

"The hardest part of this whole thing for me was that I had lost my identity as a priest because I hadn't done anything for so long and I didn't see any future of being able to come to ministry at all at that time," he said. "That was really hard to cope with. Emotionally it was very difficult for me."

He stressed the fact that priesthood is not a job, it's a whole way of living so when he was unable to do priestly ministry he felt lost.

Throughout the summer and into the fall, however, he made slow progress.

"I was slowly getting better but I had to eat again and talk again," he said. "I didn't really have to re-learn it - but I had to do it again."

While his sister welcomed him to stay in her home indefinitely, he opted to move back to Fort Dodge after he was well on the road to recovery.

He moved back to the Marian Home in Fort Dodge in mid-October. Prior to this recent bout with illness, he had resided in the apartments there but when he returned in the fall, he became a resident of the nursing home and continues to live in the main facility.

The Marian Home's director, Jerry Bruening, asked Father Fitzgerald to help out at the facility if at all possible.

The priest welcomed the opportunity. He helps with activities, delivers mail to residents so to have the chance to speak one-on-one with people, presides at Mass about two days a week and concelebrates everyday.

"Now I feel that I have a ministry," he said. "I feel wanted and feel needed."

Ministry to the elderly is not something that the priest envisioned he would be doing at this point in his life, but he enjoys it.

"I think I know what they go through," said Father Fitzgerald. "There are some people here who don't have any relatives or friends come through at all. I try to talk to those people because they need someone. I really feel like God put me here in this ministry for a reason."

This spring, he has hopes of being able to drive and that will provide him with more opportunities to serve and eventually would like to be able to move back to the apartments.

"I try to get to as many priest gatherings as I can," said Father Fitzgerald. "Even in October, when I just got back here and was sick, I went to the priest convocation in Omaha because I really wanted to see those guys again. Several priests came to see me regularly."

The visits by priests and lay people were a blessing for Father Fitzgerald.

Father Brian Danner, pastor at St. Malachy in Madrid, pointed out that he had been notified by Father Fitzgerald's sister that his brother priest had both a cardiac and respiratory arrest after choking on food during treatment for pneumonia.

"Tim and I have always been close friends. We share a commonality from our past - having both served as an associate pastor at Corpus Christi in Fort Dodge and we are in the same prayer group," noted Father Danner.

He visited the priest in Fort Dodge and Omaha on several occasions and more frequently when he was in Ames and Boone. Father Danner continues to stay in contact, talking to Father Fitzgerald anywhere from one to three times each week.

"It was a very serious situation. Tim was at death's door for quite a while and had us priests of the diocese and former parishioners praying for him for quite some time," he said. "It was quite miraculous for him to recover considering the extent of his illness and his condition."

The two priests now joke about a comment that Father Fitzgerald had made to him. At one point when Father Fitzgerald had been heavily medicated, he asked Father Danner if he had the homily ready for his funeral.

The Madrid pastor found it humbling and emotional when he walked into the hospital at Omaha and Father Fitzgerald had said, "Oh there's Brian, my best friend."

"In the moment it was very difficult for him, his family and myself - we were hanging on prayer and hope for a long time," said Father Danner.

He mentioned that he is aware that Father Fitzgerald was very appreciative of the priests who stopped to see him when he was hospitalized.

"He wanted priests to be welcome and pray with him because being a priest means a lot to him. He wanted the brotherhood of the priests to be a part of his recovery," said Father Danner, who wanted to be supportive of the sick priest not only because he was a member of the clergy but because he was a close friend.

Father Don Ries, pastor at the parishes in Jefferson and Churdan, was another faithful visitor. Father Fitzgerald served as an associate pastor at Corpus Christi when Father Ries was pastor there in the mid-1990s.

"He was a good friend and co-worker. When I heard how bad he was, I visited him a time or two when he was in the hospital (at Fort Dodge) and they were even debating pulling the plug because he went many days just being able to breathe with the help of machines," he explained.

Father Ries visited the sick priest on a weekly basis when he was hospitalized in Ames as well as when Father Fitzgerald lived with his sister. Father Ries realized that Ames was a good distance for the majority of the priests to travel so it would make it difficult for many of the priests to visit him on a weekly basis.

"I saw what I would call, almost a miraculous recovery," he said.

Father Ries, who mentioned that Father Fitzgerald was always appreciative of the visits, knew his brother priest looked forward to returning to ministry at the Marian Home.

"He is able to offer Mass and has contact with the retired priests, who live there as well as ongoing contact with other people," described Father Ries, who visits him in Fort Dodge about once a month. "The last time I stopped up there, it was during Bingo and who do you think was calling Bingo - Father Tim."

Another frequent visitor was Father Jim McAlpin of Breda.

"I remember that I asked Father Jim if it was okay to die. He told me that was the only way to get to heaven," recalled Father Fitzgerald.

He pointed out that the women from Sacred Heart Parish in Boone were extremely helpful to him.

"They came to see me everyday, Monday to Friday, and sat with me from noon until 4 p.m.," said Father Fitzgerald. "I cannot commend them enough."

When his sister was at work, there was a caregiver in the morning and the women of Sacred Heart mainly provided socialization.

Knowing how much a pastoral presence means to people when they are ill, he believes has positively impacted his own ministry.

Back in Fort Dodge, he not only had the assistance of Jerry Bruening at Marian Home but that of a former parishioner, John Bruner.

Father Fitzgerald described Bruner as an advocate for him. He is a parishioner of Corpus Christi and came to know the priest when Father Fitzgerald served there as an assistant in the mid-1990s for four years.

"I've been a friend of father's for a number of years and recently he has needed help communicating some problems and overcoming those. He is a very courageous man," noted Bruner, a financial planner, who helped Father Fitzgerald with various business matters. "This guy is so easy to be a friend to, he doesn't make any demands."

He acknowledged that many people in Fort Dodge didn't know the gravity of the situation initially, but eventually heard the news. Like others, Bruner was surprised that the priest lived and thought he would at least be totally disabled.

"We didn't expect to find a man so full of life and planning a future with his priesthood," said Bruner. "Father Fitzgerald doesn't know if there will ever be a cure in his lifetime, but there is hope and there are prayers. He's resilient and full of life."

The Fort Dodge businessman called Father Fitzgerald an inspiration.

Bruner and Bruening are just two people in Fort Dodge who assist the priest. Others throughout the diocese, including those at the chancery, have also assisted him in a variety of ways.

"I don't know that I will ever be able to leave here, but if I can't I have to believe that God has me here for a purpose," he said. "Although I don't know what that purpose is totally, I trust in God and believe that he saved me from death."