{"id":390279,"date":"2026-01-05T20:42:12","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T20:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/390279\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T20:42:12","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T20:42:12","slug":"delray-doctor-survives-three-near-death-experiences-has-a-message-to-share-about-health-care-sun-sentinel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/390279\/","title":{"rendered":"Delray doctor survives three near-death experiences, has a message to share about health care \u2013 Sun Sentinel"},"content":{"rendered":"

By all measures, Dr. Tim Williams should not be alive.<\/p>\n

Williams, 69, has survived a fall while home alone, a brain bleed, a coma for nine days, and in-bed surgery to drain fluid buildup in his brain \u2014 and a major recovery effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s at least three times I could have easily died,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

Williams<\/a> had previously spent his days overseeing the delivery of radiation therapy to patients as the director of The South Florida Proton Therapy Institute<\/a> at Delray Medical Center. But on the first Saturday in March, he was at his Lake Worth Beach home, alone.<\/p>\n

Sara, his wife of only a few months, was hundreds of miles away in Washington, D.C., and felt something was wrong when her husband didn\u2019t respond to her morning calls and texts. She asked a neighbor to check on him. The neighbor found Williams semi-conscious on the floor with a bruise on his head and called for an ambulance.<\/p>\n

Williams said when the emergency crew arrived, his brain was in\u00a0 an \u201cactive bleed.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear if the otherwise healthy doctor fell and hit his head, causing the brain bleed, or if an aneurysm caused the bleed and fall. Regardless, his medical condition became precarious.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is as if your body is an hourglass, and every second that passes places you in more peril as your life force is leaking out through the bottom,\u201d he said. \u201cIf appropriate care isn\u2019t delivered within time, the sand runs out, and your next stop is the funeral home. No one on earth knows the exact amount of time you have left. One thing is clear, though, is that there isn\u2019t much. It is measured in minutes, not hours.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside the ambulance, his condition deteriorated quickly. Emergency crews typically take patients to the nearest hospital, but they suspected a stroke and took Williams to Delray Medical Center, a recognized Comprehensive Stroke Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is one thing I am sure of, it is that if it weren\u2019t for the quality and professionalism of the physicians and staff at Delray Medical Center, I would have died. I\u2019m a very lucky guy. My journey has taken me from being perhaps 15 minutes from death to an almost complete recovery.\u201d \u2014 Dr. Tim Williams<\/p>\n

Later, Williams wrote a thank-you letter to the hospital staff describing the events.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been on the staff at Delray Medical Center since 1989 and served four years as a member of the senior governing board. None of this was known to anyone involved on the morning of March 1, 2025, when the ambulance picked me up, near death, on the floor at the foot of my bed,\u201d Williams wrote. \u201cMy neurologist would later tell me that, at the time, I only had perhaps another 20 to 30 minutes to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hospital staff immediately took a scan that showed a severe brain bleed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey couldn\u2019t tell if it was a full-blown stroke or aneurysm or any of that, but they did see blood,\u201d Sara Williams said. \u201cSo it was just kind of a waiting game to see if the blood would drain the normal way, but it didn\u2019t. He just got worse and worse and worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"StrokeStroke survivor Dr. Tim Williams during his time in the Delray Medical Center. (Sara Williams\/Courtesy)<\/p>\n

For three days, Williams drifted in and out of consciousness, only to suffer a huge setback. He became completely confused, an indication of fluid buildup in his brain. The staff did another MRI.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompletely unconscious, blood pressure dropping, I was hauled immediately back to radiology for an emergency MRI scan of my brain,\u201d Williams said. \u201cThe images were bleak. Blood was everywhere.\u00a0\u2026 This prompted a spinal tap, which showed blood around my spinal cord. And, as if that wasn\u2019t enough, my brain was swollen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was dying, again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Neurosurgeon Dr. Ron Young<\/a> arrived to see his friend in trouble. \u201cWhen I got there, he was barely responding at all,\u201d Young said.<\/p>\n

With no time to secure an operating room, Young called for a craniotomy tray and, at the bedside, drilled a hole in Williams\u2019 scalp. He stuck a small drainage tube into the middle of Williams\u2019 brain.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin a few minutes, he was more responsive and started talking,\u201d Young said. \u201cBleeds are relatively common. We see this fairly often. Not finding the cause is quite uncommon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Young said it\u2019s a true miracle that Williams survived all he endured: \u201cIf appropriate treatment isn\u2019t delivered, outcomes are poor,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Soon after Young drained the fluid, Williams slipped into a coma, where he remained for nine days. During that time, he battled aspiration pneumonia, yet he doesn\u2019t remember anything.<\/p>\n

When he finally awoke, he had a long, hard recovery ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was not mobile whatsoever,\u201d Sara Williams said. \u201cThe physical therapy staff came for the first time to stand him up and get him out of the bed, and that\u2019s when we found out that he wasn\u2019t able to walk.\u201d<\/p>\n

At rehab, Williams underwent physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy.<\/p>\n

After 43 days at Delray Medical Center and then its rehabilitation facility, Williams finally went home \u2014 still unable to fully walk or use his hands and struggling with short-term memory.<\/p>\n

\"TimDr. Tim Williams and his wife, Sara Williams, visit Delray Medical Center on Friday. Williams, the director of the hospital’s proton therapy center, became a patient there after collapsing at home. He survived a stroke, nine days in a coma, an in-bed surgery and a long recovery. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we came home, it was actually the scariest part of the whole ordeal,\u201d his wife said. \u201cHe was tired a lot. He could not tolerate a lot of motion or activity around him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t summer camp, but I did everything I was told, worked hard, and did as much as possible to assist with my own recovery,\u201d Williams said.<\/p>\n

As a patient, rather than a doctor, Williams says he has seen health care from a different perspective: \u201cIf there is one thing I am sure of, it is that if it weren\u2019t for the quality and professionalism of the physicians and staff at Delray Medical Center, I would have died. I\u2019m a very lucky guy. My journey has taken me from being perhaps 15 minutes from death to an almost complete recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine months after his ordeal started, Williams says he still tires easily and describes himself as 80% back to normal. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ll ever get back to 100,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He doesn\u2019t plan to return to work in the same capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy clinical days are pretty much done. It\u2019s too stressful. There\u2019s too medical decision-making,\u201d he said. Instead, he plans to conduct research in radiation oncology.<\/p>\n

\"TimTim Williams and his wife, Sara Williams, visit Delray Medical Center on Friday. Williams, the director of the hospital’s proton therapy center, became a patient there after collapsing at home. He survived a stroke, nine days in a coma, an in-bed surgery and a long recovery. (Carline Jean\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n

Williams wants others to learn from his experience. He says the medical staff\u2019s knowledge of strokes and brain bleeds in the neurology ICU made all the difference in his survival.\u00a0 The message he wants to get out is that anyone with stroke symptoms needs to go to a stroke center.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the right place at the right time,\u201d he said. \u201cI was lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

South Florida Sun Sentinel health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By all measures, Dr. Tim Williams should not be alive. Williams, 69, has survived a fall while home…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390280,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,165569,6388,84,392,165570,4245,884,44,121387,715],"class_list":{"0":"post-390279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-delray-beach","11":"tag-florida","12":"tag-health","13":"tag-healthcare","14":"tag-lake-worth-beach","15":"tag-latest-headlines","16":"tag-local-news","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-palm-beach-county","19":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}