Dark night turned into a bright new day

I’ve not been here for a bit and while doing some housecleaning thought to check back in here and noticed my last post. I thought I’d best update things!

Evan spent a month in the Critical Care Unit of the ICU but last Thursday was moved to the “normal” ICU. He had us all very worried for much of the month and I’ve spent most of my non-working hours there with him. He was mostly comatose, kept that way, for three weeks. On the rare occasion his eyes would open, they were a blank, vacant stare. No sign of him at all. But last week, he suddenly began improving again.

They had begun weaning him off the respirator last weekend, until then he had been unable to sustain breathing on his own at all. I think the problem was, not only the severity of his asthma, but the smallness of the passenger seat compartment in the vehicle he was riding. He had severe bruising on both sides and I think his sides were hammered by the center console and the caving in of the passenger door multiple times during the accident, severely bruising his lungs. Once THEY healed, he was able to be weaned off the respirator, by the end of last weekend, he was breathing on his own entirely, and Monday night when I got there to visit him, the first thing I noticed was the room seemed empty – that was because the respirator had been removed. He was breathing entirely on his own, through the tracheotomy site, receiving slightly moistened air, but initiating breaths on his own. His improvement since then has been remarkable.

Friday evening when I arrived, they had installed an ingenious little device that allowed him to talk, on his own, hands still tethered, but when I came into the room, he looked at me and said, “hi, pop”. My son was back in his body, mind lucid, no memory of the accident but fully conscious and hardly able to believe he had missed a whole month. His wounds are healing well, he still has a lot of pain with the right leg and hip fracture and the left ankle is being kept going by another device, a wound vac, that is usually used with burn victims, which flushes the area 24/7 with fluids and nutrients. The sole of his foot was reattached with staples, which were removed this past week, as the reattachment “took” and there is healing going on there. It is still likely he will need a graft of some kind as he lost so much tissue, but he will keep his foot and a plastic surgeon will make it functional. He will be moving from the hospital to a care center in two to three weeks, where he will begin rehabilitation, to learn to walk all over again and regain the strength in his body. He has virtually none now, they removed the tethers from his wrists yesterday, but after over a month in one position, everything is sort of locked in one place and it is excruciating to move, even though vocational rehabilitation has already begun to help him regain range of motion and strength in his arms and shoulders. Anyone who had seen him bucking like a bronco as the medications would wear off over the past three weeks, trying to get out of bed, would find it hard to believe that he is now this week. Drugs are powerful fuel though and the enforced position has left him weak as a kitten. But the news is all good and he will again regain the strength of a lion, it will just take some time. And more time with him is what we have now, thanks to the angels of mercy, they call RN’s, who work 12 hour shifts with just two patients in the Critical Care Unit and whose professionalism, kindness, expertise and optimism kept our whole group of family and friends going these past four weeks. They are selfless and dedicated and marvelous human beings. And their ranks are being cut by 100 thanks to the skinflint we have as a Governor, Tim Pawlenty, Mr. No Taxes on the rich, who is preparing to end any sort of medical care for single adults, employed or not, able to care for themselves or not, so his rich friends aren’t inconvenienced in any way. For a party, Republican, that bills itself as Christian they seem to know little of how Christ treated the poor and infirm. That will be another post. This one I will end with a small prayer of gratitude to my Jenna and the angels who work with her for giving me back my only child. Thank you. Much love, :^) gene

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene

What dark night is this?

So, my third post of the year. Why? Well, the year has been taken with concern for and dealing with my only remaining child. He has been dark and depressed for most of the past three years as he separated from his wife, I will not go into why here, that is his and hers, and this isn’t about fault, for none of us are perfect. Still, it has been a long and contentious process and they are not yet divorced. He has taken more than his share of that weight on his shoulders. Much more. He has hated himself and the world. He has lived only for his children. He has struggled with alcohol. He decided six weeks ago to cleanse himself of that addiction, found and entered a treatment program. But he was too smart for his own good. Those of you who have come here from my main site know that I lost my youngest son a bit over 12 years ago. I have cherished my remaining son, my eldest, in the years since, though he too, as well as his mother, has suffered from the loss of our littlest one. Each of us in our own have absorbed blame we did not, perhaps, deserve for Brandon’s final act. He chose for himself. I wrote at length about my own part in the post about complicated bereavement. Knowing what happened to me within has not changed how I feel within. My oldest is a very smart man, he’s got an IQ of 157 and is as smart a man as you will ever run across. But he has a demon following him, a demon that follows many and has strewn many of our family, on both sides, across the fields of life and death.

Evan decided to enter a treatment program, found one and did. He attended two and a half weeks. After his Tuesday session in the third week, when I picked him up, he talked all the way home about how the evening had gone. His group leader had made some statements, categorically, which Evan knew to be wrong. And he spoke up, proved the truth he knew, and changed the dynamic of the group. From that point on, people asked his advice on issues, his take on their situation, the group leader as she threw out new questions to the group would say, what do you think about that, Evan? In his fourth meeting, he was running the group. That was a huge mistake, not his, he was being himself, but the group leader who allowed it to happen. It isn’t a new thing, Evan has been a leader all his life, people are drawn to him, and they want to do what he wants to do. When I would take him out to play at 5, before that I kept him inside, and he’d meet with other children, within minutes whatever they were doing stopped and they were doing what he wanted to do. He never commanded, or threatened, or did anything but be himself, they just wanted to do what he wanted to do. This has not always served him well. For to be a true leader, one needs the wisdom that comes with age and experience, to lead without that, can have dire consequences. All his life he has led whatever group he associated with. He is a dynamic but not domineering presence. And he has great compassion. But his choices have not always been wise. They’ve been his and he’s been successful with them, he only ever got in trouble when he relied on others to do their part and they couldn’t be him. I worried that night and the next day over how that last session had gone. He was feeling his oats, cocky, and in control. But that is NOT the point of treatment. The point of treatment is to recognize that something has power over you that you cannot control, and to learn mechanism’s to take back that control. In this case, his demon was alcohol.

I went to bed Wednesday night at 10, he sat downstairs fighting the urge to drink, and lost the battle, he took a cab to a bar, met a young man who had been of legal age for 2 days, celebrated with him and let him take him home rather than taking a cab as usual. I don’t know all of this yet, though it happened on April 23rd. The reason I don’t know is that at 2:23 that morning, that young man, on a residential street with a speed limit of 30 mph, was driving 80 mph, 30 feet from a stop sign at an intersection that ended that street. There was a gentle curve leading to that intersection, he couldn’t navigate it, and they drove through the curve into a yard and hit a large mature tree head on. The driver was thrown through the windshield and was up making calls in a couple minutes. Evan was trapped in the passenger seat as the car wound around the tree, the engine flew into another yard, part of the firewall came back into the passenger compartment and sheared off the sole of Evan’s left foot, leaving a gaping wound 7 inches long exposing the bone and cartilage of his left foot. The passenger door caved in and broke his right femur, shattered his right hip, and the dash crashed into and cracked his sternum. His scalp was lacerated and had to be reattached. He obviously saw it coming because he threw his arms up in front of him and his arms looked like he’d been in a fight with a mountain lion, and lost. He has been unconscious, in critical condition, in the critical care unit of a level one trauma hospital since that night.

It took 7 1/2 hours of surgery that night to repair his right femur and hip. It took the rest of the morning and day to save his life, THEN the surgery. I wasn’t contacted until 12 hours after the accident. When the investigating detective went to the hospital that morning, she asked if the family had been contacted, the staff said no, they had been busy trying to keep him alive. They can be proud, they did. Angels of mercy are they, who work 12 hour shifts, 7 days a week, without regard to holidays, secular or religious, because lives depend on their care. They are modern day living angels.

So. He’s been unconscious most of the time since, under heavy sedation and pain medication. Only one night was he lucid enough to react to my talking to him. Currently only three people are allowed to see him, at his express wish that night he was semi-lucid. He doesn’t want anyone to see him as he is. I don’t blame him. That he has been unconscious is merciful. That machines can tell when he is in pain and relieve that pain is a modern miracle. That I cannot hold and hug and tell my son that everything is going to be alright and he’ll be whole again is hell on earth. Twice now this experience. Am I blessed or cursed?

At least this time, my son is breathing, albeit via respirator, but his left ankle is so badly damaged that if they can save his foot, and that is far from certain, it will be always deformed. Was there a divine purpose in this horror? Obviously the group he was in for treatment was NOT right for him, group members are there to learn, not control. Did he need a lesson to learn that? Did he need to be humbled so that despite his intellect he could finally understand that intelligence alone is not enough to survive in this world? That we need each other to do that? His angels. Those who care about him? Those who are devastated by what has happened to him. Will he emerge from this a stronger, better man? Will he survive at all? All questions I cannot answer. He has had various procedures done unto him these past days, each has caused its own trauma. His asthma is so severe that it complicates everything the medical people are doing, he goes into respiratory distress during procedures. Today his blood pressure went over 200 and his heart rate over 150 as they LOOKED at his ankle and performed a tracheotomy so the intubation tube could come out of his throat after 9 days. His eyes never even fluttered while I stood by him, though he grimaced with pain in his drugged slumber.

The sole of his foot MUST reattach, or he will lose it completely, it is a horrible wound. If the sole finds his soul and reunites, a skin graft can be done to cover the gaping hole left by the tissue torn away during the accident. He will always have a deformed foot, but he will be able to walk, if. It will be a 6 to 9 month rehabilitation process, 4-8 weeks in the hospital and then a care facility, at the moment the high end in the hospital is looking most likely because they are treating his trauma and his asthma is getting palliative care and THAT is what is causing his respiratory distress. He has has asthma since he was 5 I know what respiratory distress looks like and this is worse. I have twice given the trauma station people his asthma specialists name and number, they MUST coordinate care with him, because what they are doing now for his asthma is palliative and that isn’t enough. Two weeks ago he began a regimen of three injections every two weeks, each series costs $7000.00. He’s had one, the next is due on Monday 5/4, and he won’t get it.

I am dealing with his business, I’ve a list of 13 things that have to be done, people that need to know things, that have to be informed, insurance, police, agencies. There is an SSI appeal going on because we filed a claim last fall and though the specialist the SS administration sent him to, showed 17% lung function in the lower half of his lungs and 40% in the upper half, they denied his claim. Why? Because the fact that he had been able to work for 8 of the previous 10 years proved he could work. Completely ignoring the fact that because his asthma has gotten so bad the last 2 years he hasn’t been able to work at all. His lawyers are sure we’ll win that. So am I. But then there is also the divorce, the consequences of his alcohol induced errors, his car, his recovery and rehabilitation. And so much more. I’ve had a headache for 4 months, I find myself hoping it is a tumor because I will not seek nor accept treatment for it. I’ve not really slept since Brandon died and watching Evan in this state is even worse. Brandon was one night, Evan is so strong he is holding on and fighting, but I feel like Chief Joseph, I wish to lay down my weapons and fight no more forever.

For any who wish to verify, or visit, or see, or understand. I have a web page set up for him, he could use your prayers and good thoughts. http://www.caringbridge.com/visit/evanj731