Q. Welcome to Just Fame! Please tell our readers about your new book.
Tattered Flesh, Resilient Spirit is our personal story, as I survived and endured an infection with flesh eating bacteria. With less than a 10 percent chance of survival, our story is a testament to unwavering faith and the incredible doctors and nurses that helped me through. It happened right at the end of my residency training as a pediatrician, so it combines my insight as the patient and physician, as well as the raw emotions told through journal entries by my wife, Michelle, and others from during the ordeal. On top of everything else, Michelle was 6 months pregnant at the time with a two and four year old at home. We had also already sold our house, so in the midst of everything going on with me in the hospital, she and our family and friends had to find a new place to stay even after most of our belongings were moved to another state. Along with the drama of this horrific time, I explore our faith, from both of our perspectives, and how it was tested to the limits. This story is not sugar-coated, but an intense and real perspective on critical illness and how it affects the patient as well as the family and friends that go through it with them. I wrote this book as a way to heal and process what I had gone through with the hopes that others would benefit from sharing in our story.
Q. After everything you endured, what simple everyday moment or activity now brings you the most joy—something you may have taken for granted before your illness?
Everything. When I woke up for the first time during the ordeal, I still had a breathing tube in so I couldn’t even speak. I couldn’t move, couldn’t feed myself, couldn’t walk. It was terrifying and took a while to understand where I was and what was happening. Being able to do anything for myself after not being able to was the best feeling. Being able to be a husband, father and doctor again after being unable was my biggest goal and kept me going through the long road to recovery. It really helps you stay grounded and take advantage of every opportunity that life has to offer after you’ve been on the brink of losing everything.
Q. Your book includes a patient- and family-focused appendix. Based on your experience, what practical or emotional guidance do most hope readers—especially families facing critical illness—will take away from your story?
Having a loved one in an Intensive Care Unit or undergoing any significant medical interventions can be so overwhelming for anyone, especially if they don’t have a medical background to try to understand everything that is going on. I added the appendix in hopes of explaining medical terms and jargon so that everyone could have a basic understanding of what the most common terms mean.
Q. What’s next? Which book or project are you working on now?
I have just released an online course titled “Thriving with ADHD”, and have started putting together my second course, titled “Thriving with a Newborn”. I really like to help people find practical and positive ways to manage illnesses and meet the normal challenges of becoming a parent. “Thriving” is a mindset that I’ve always hoped to foster in my patients, no matter what they are facing.
Q. Finally, as we ask all our guests, do you have any closing thoughts that you would like to share with the world and our readers?
Thank you! Thank you for this opportunity to share a little bit about my book, Tattered Flesh, Resilient Spirit. I hope that you will check it out, I know that you will be moved in some way by sharing our experience. I know that you will be able to take away positive items from your own life and be better equipped to understand if you or someone close to you goes through a difficult time, medical or otherwise. My biggest hope is that it will strengthen your own faith and help you work through your own questions and doubts from the challenges this world provides. Thanks again!
Craig H. Collison, MD grew up in central Pennsylvania, graduating from State College High School. He earned an engineering degree from Penn State University and went on to medical school at Wake Forest University. He then did his Pediatrics training at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, part of Case Western Reserve University. In the last months of his residency training, he had a surgery to remove a lipoma that got super-infected, causing necrotizing fasciitis and myositis (flesh-eating bacteria). The book “Tattered Flesh, Resilient Spirit” chronicles this illness and how faith in God and an incredible health team helped Craig and his family through the most difficult challenge of his life.
Tattered Flesh, Resilient Spirit is a powerful and deeply personal medical memoir that chronicles the extraordinary survival of physician Craig H. Collison, M.D., who, at the height of his medical training, was suddenly struck by a devastating case of necrotizing fasciitis-commonly known as “flesh-eating bacteria.” Told through the rare dual lens of doctor and patient, this gripping narrative offers a day-by-day account of emergency surgeries, intensive care, organ failure, and prolonged rehabilitation. Interwoven throughout the story are intimate bedside journal entries written by Collison’s wife, family, and friends-capturing raw fear, unwavering love, and the strength of a community united by hope.