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Henrietta Hilberath at a costume fitting in prepration for last year's parade.
Henrietta Hilberath, a retired special education consultant from Livonia, had been marching in the annual Detroit Thanksgiving Parade for nearly a decade. Last year, hours before the parade, she started suiting up as a peapod in a building not far from the route on Woodward Avenue, as part of a theme on community food banks.
But before she could completely slip into the costume, a near-death experience came knocking, followed by more than eight hours of surgery at the Detroit Medical Center to repair an aortic dissection – a serious tear in the wall of the aorta, the main artery that carries blood from the heart to the rest of the body.
During her recovery, staff at Harper Hospital, part of DMC, affectionately referred to her as the peapod.
Healed and ready to try again, she said she plans to march in the parade as an elf, possibly holding the parade banner, along with her niece -- also an elf -- at the start of the procession. It's a testament to medical miracles and her resolve.
“I was determined to be in the parade again," she told Deadline Detroit.
Every Thanksgiving, downtown Detroit is abuzz. There’s the Turkey Trot, a 5–10K race early in the morning before the parade, and in the afternoon, the annual Detroit Lions game at Ford Field. Last year Dan Campbell's crew played the Chicago Bears.
At 5:30 a.m., many hours before the Lions’ kickoff with the Bears, Hilberath, now 70, showed up with her niece, Lisa McCormick, who is in early 50s, on the second floor of the student center at Wayne State University. While suiting up in her peapod costume to march along side the Huntington Bank float with her niece, “I suddenly got an extreme pain in my shoulder.”
The pain became excruciating. First, she thought she may have pulled a muscle. Then she started vomiting. She passed out and came to, and passed out again.
Her niece immediately called 911. Thankfully, because EMS was close by for the parade, they quickly swooped in and whisked her off to Detroit Receiving Hospital, a little more than a mile away.
They quickly diagnosed her as having an aortic dissection, a health crisis not all survive.
Dr. Frank Baciewicz, a thoracic surgeon and professor at the Wayne State University School of Medicine, who was on call, summoned his surgery team. And hospital staff suggested she call loved ones, saying she may not make it.
“‘If you want to say anything to your family this would be a good time,’” she recalled being told. “I asked, ‘By any chance is there a priest around or a chaplain? I’m Catholic. I was wondering if I could have last rites.' It was just so surreal."
A chaplain called on a cell phone and spoke to her briefly. And her husband and two adult children rushed down before the surgery.
Henrietta Hilberath (left) and niece Lisa McCormick will be elves this year
“I just said, ‘I love all of you and I hope this is going to work.'" She also said she was very proud of them.
It wasn’t until Saturday, days later, after being in a medically induced coma, that she was conscious for a little bit, and on Sunday, more so.
“At that point I just thought I was in a bad dream. Because last I remember I was trying to put on this peapod costume, and now I’m strapped in a bed with a mask on my face and five or six tubes coming out of my chest and all these machines beeping and lit up around me.”
"It's a big deal surgery," Dr. Baciewicz told Deadline Detroit, explaining that only 6,000 to 8,000 deal with it yearly in the U.S. "The patients basically have a tear beginning just above their aortic valve and the tear goes all the way to the feet in her particular case."
He said on the average 10-20 percent of those who undergo the surgery don't make it.
He said he started the surgery before the Lions game against the Bears and finished it before the game was over.
Hilberath can’t recall if she arrived at the hospital with the peapod outfit or if her niece mentioned it to the ER staff.
“But it just seemed like the staff and team of ER folks, they just kind of took a liking to the idea of saving a peapod," she said.
Her family told her after the surgery that someone from the pulmonary department stuck their head in the room, saying they were checking on the peapod. And others too, including someone from the lab, came by checking on — yes — the peapod.
Dr. Frank Baciewicz (WSU photo)
She said she was grateful to Dr. Baciewicz and staff.
“I was very fortunate to have a wonderful cardiac team, and they gave up their Thanksgiving for me and saved my life.”
Her Farmington Hills dermatologist, Dr. Wendy Sadoff, who she shared the story with, explained why the staff was probably so happy to see her post-surgery.
“She said, ‘You need to understand that these folks deal with trauma every day and, you know, the outcomes are not always very good,’ and she said in your case, it was miraculous.”
Hilberath stayed in the hospital for three weeks.
Later, she went through cardiac rehab for two months and subsequently physical therapy for two months.
A few weeks ago she met with Dr. Baciewicz and asked if he’d send a note to the staff. He asked what she wanted him to say.
She scribbled some notes on a piece of paper toweling, essentially telling the staff that there was a lady who came in last year dressed like a peapod.
And she went on to say: "You saved my life and I just want you to know that this year I get to be in the parade again and I’m going to be an elf and hopefully carry the first banner.”
Dr. Baciewicz said Wednesday that her story is a fantastic one.
"I'm not on call tomorrow, so I told her I would try to come down and see her leading the parade."
