Life has been fairly quiet for Todd Reese following a near-death experience that took years of recovery.
In 2017, following Hurricane Irma, Reese developed pneumonia and was bedridden for some time.
“What I didn’t know was that there was another big storm brewing inside of me called a factor five mutation,” Reese said. “I’m a real live mutant.”
A factor five mutation is a genetic change in the F5 gene that can either increase the risk of blood clots or cause a bleeding disorder. When he was sick and bedridden, he developed a blood clot that led to a catastrophic pulmonary embolism. Thankfully, a friend came to check on him and made a life-saving call to 911.
“I would not have been here, just a few days after that,” Reese said. “My lungs collapsed and I went into respiratory failure and cardiac arrest.”
He was put on a ventilator and ended up in a coma. He was not expected to regain consciousness.
“With a little bit of drama – melodrama, I would say – I removed that ventilator, and by the grace of God, I breathed,” Reese said. “I continued to breathe.”
Reese returned home with a 24-hour caregiver and embarked on his long road to recovery, which included relearning how to eat, talk and walk.
“It’s been a long journey,” he said. “The doctors here, especially at St. Vincent’s, they brought me back from the dead.”
This journey was also one that ended his career, which began in social work and included time in advocacy and funding during the HIV pandemic.
He helped build the clinic for the AIDS Healthcare Fund and started writing grant proposals to procure funding. He turned $100,000 into $3 million. He also helped start the medical case management program, which hired and trained people with HIV helps others navigate the disease.
“I’m often called the grandfather of the program,” Reese said.
A turn into the wrong hospital room set him on the path to helping people living with HIV and AIDS: While looking for a family member staying in the hospital, Reese accidentally entered the room of a man dying from AIDS.
“I was frightened and left the room and went and visited my relative, who was surrounded by family and friends and all the care she could possibly need,” Reese said. “Even though I was very young, this is the most shameful moment of my life. To abandon or not come to the aid of someone that was suffering.”
He went back to the room, but the man had died, alone.
“It was that moment that I decided to dedicate my career to helping people with HIV and AIDS,” Reese said.
He procured funding and established a process where vendors could apply for funding for mental health and outpatient and medical care. This was before treatment options were available. He also became a database engineer and built the first database to track all the outcomes, measures and variables the federal government required in order to get funding.
Following his own brush with death, Reese truly believes he’s here for a reason, though his journey back to himself was difficult. He suffered some vision loss in both eyes because of the blood clots and for some time, he was confined to a wheelchair, making it difficult to navigate and venture to a lot of places.
“The world does not really accommodate wheelchairs very well and it doesn’t accommodate people with balance disorders very well,” he said.
It was during that time, confined to his home, that he rekindled his love of writing – spurred by his great-aunt and nurtured during nearly 30 years of grant writing – thanks to encouragement from a friend.
“For flips and giggles, I decided that I would publish a book,” Reese said.
He has written two children’s books featuring Mistymoto, a main character based on his beloved cocker spaniel. A third book is expected to be published around Christmas.
“People need something that makes them curious and feel good and happy and adventurous,” Reese said. “I’ve had a lot of fun with it.”
He truly enjoys writing and hopes it offers comfort to those who read it.
“It’s therapy rolled into writing,” Reese said. “It really has rekindled my soul.”
He hopes the books will stay with the children as they grow up and accompany them through life. All his books end with a happy ending, which, he said, is a must. They are also all-inclusive and not targeted to a specific group. For Reese, it’s all about renewal, rebirth, resilience and, most importantly, kindness.
“There just isn’t enough of that in the world today,” Reese said.
Reese is no longer restricted to his little piece of land on Wolfe Street. He started to venture out more these last couple of years. One of his favorite things is hunting for antiques and china.
He collects Fukagawa Arita china and is currently obsessed with a particular pattern that features pagodas and delicate landscapes. Not one to put his china in a cabinet and never use it, Reese sets his table with his favorite collection during holiday dinners.
“It’s not just hidden and tucked away,” Reese said. “My house is filled with it.”
He also spends time caring for his rescue Teddy, another cocker spaniel, and a foster dog named Linda who is 16 years old, blind and deaf. Both will make a debut in his upcoming books.
