Lance Overmyer Song In His Heart

He has a song in his heart
Fire chief sings with joy after his operation

HOMETOWN
Published on: 1/28/2004
By IDA CHIPMAN
Tribune Correspondent
Tribune Photo/ IDA CHIPMAN
SouthBendTribune.com:

Culver -- Lance Overmyer has been chief of the Culver -Union Township Fire Department for the past 20 years and a volunteer firefighter for four decades.

But the 60-year-old has had to overcome some major medical hurdles along the way.

He recently underwent successful surgery to repair a vocal cord that was damaged during an emergency, life-saving medical procedure some 10 years ago.

Overmyer graduated from Culver Community High School in 1961, then attended Manchester College for less than a year.

"My mother," he said, "kept getting a vast number of letters concerning my behavior, not my grades, and I retired from academia."

Working in the family's business, Overmyer Soft Water Service, across the street from the late Jay Snyder's car dealership, Overmyer was frequently called upon to chauffeur Snyder to the fire station on fire calls.

"Jay kept losing his keys so I'd be asked to drive him," Overmyer said. "Two days after my 21st birthday, he suggested I join the department, and I did."

It was a decision he has never regretted.

"Firefighters have a bond that is unexplainable," he said. "I think you saw that in New York City after 9/11. There is truly a brotherhood."

Overmyer, father of four and grandfather of two, recently underwent corrective surgery on his vocal cords damaged in the aftermath of a life-threatening auto accident 10 years ago.

He was critically injured in an accident believed to have been caused by his reaction to a cortisone shot for an ailing shoulder.

"We are convinced that he had a severe allergic reaction to the injection he got," Lynn Overmyer, Lance's wife of 41 years, said.

While returning from the doctor's appointment in South Bend, Overmyer, passing through Lakeville, apparently fell unconscious at the wheel of his car and slammed head-on into a parked Mack truck.

Mrs. Overmyer said her husband suffered several injuries, such as a dislocated hip, but by far the worst was a ruptured aorta.

By chance, the vast amount of blood that filled his chest cavity pushed against the torn vessel and stopped the bleeding, saving his life.

He was a patient three weeks at Memorial Hospital in South Bend.

Finally, his surgeon told the family that he thought there was an infection in the fiberglass patch on Overmyer's aorta and that he was not equipped to handle the complications.

Several hospitals refused to accept his case. Finally the Baylor University Medical Center in Houston, agreed to take him and with a respiratory nurse and an R.N. aboard an Airvac plane, Overmyer was flown to Houston.

"They put me back together," Mr. Overmyer said.

"It's a wonder he made it to Houston," Mrs. Overmyer said, "but he did."

In a surgery that lasted from 1 p.m. until 11:30 that night, they found that the patch was not infected, but had come loose, allowing multiple blood clots to form in his chest."

According to Mrs. Overmyer, after they opened Lance's chest, the surgeon literally scooped out handfuls of clots from his chest cavity.

While on the plane to Houston, Overmyer went into a code blue and the attendants knocked out two of his front teeth while inserting a breathing tube. In so doing, his left vocal cord was damaged.

It is the only thing he remembers about the trip to Texas. When he arrived on the ground, he had his two teeth clenched in his fist.

The procedure, though it damaged his voice box, saved his life. It did leave him with a raspy whispering voice that took some getting used to.

Through the intervening years it had gotten to a point where Lance was having trouble breathing and would often choke while drinking liquids.

Last month, Overmyer was admitted to The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Md., where he underwent a surgical procedure in which a piece of fiberglass was inserted next to the right vocal cord to push it over to the paralyzed left so that they would hit together.

In the middle of the surgery he was brought up to consciousness and told to talk, nonstop, while the positioning was accomplished.

"Talk, hell," Overmyer said, "I've wanted to sing for the past ten years and I am going to sing!"

And so he did.

"My husband is definitely no singer," Mrs. Overmyer said, "but he serenaded the O.R. staff with his own rendition of 'Volare,' a song he doesn't even know."

When they came out of the operating room the medical personnel were (for a change) in stitches themselves!

On the up side, Mrs. Overmyer said, "It is wonderful! Lance doesn't snore anymore."

And that's a good thing