Chapter 3.) Part I
What follows upon waking up from a coma is very interesting. Awake, but confused. Beginning a new week, each day I continued to speak my son’s name, in hope that he would open his eyes for longer periods. Seems a Mother knows just what to say to get the attention of her child. Calling out his full name – Tyrrell James – had an effect on him. It was as if he was a small boy again and whenever I called out and combined his first and middle name, he would know I meant business. Abruptly, he would open the ‘good’ eye (the eye that didn’t have stitches), ever so slightly. Each time I softly called out his name, he would briefly raise the good eye then slowly close the eye. The eye opening gave me just enough time to see my son and to know it truly was him.
This week I was told about my son’s pulmonary embolism ‘blood clots’ in his legs that had traveled to his lungs. The collapsed lung was still draining, the three broken ribs still healing, but the clots now were a worry. Blood thinning medicine of Warfarin (Coumadin) and stomach shots of Luvenox were given each day. The stomach feeding tube had 6 stitches holding the clear plastic top that lay onto his stomach area, then a large heavier plastic tube went from a hole in the plastic down into his stomach, right above the belly button area. Tye was constantly reaching to feel the area at the feeding tube mark. His right hand was fine, it played a big part in everything he felt. The stitches looked like Frankenstein’s handy work, so he would feel the stitches and I would tell him, “No honey, don’t do that – don’t touch where you hurt.” He would pull at the catheter and reach for the bandage of his left hand to feel that area as well. With closed eyes, his new world was unknown, yet real enough to feel. Heavily sedated on morphine, an antibiotic, blood thinners and bags hanging from poles, I remember looking around the bed area and thinking, could they get any more stuff onto my son. Monitors would light up and you could read the vitals as much as you were educated to do so.
He sleeps a lot, but I stay near. He moves his legs all around. Being 6’2 and not even really fitting in a hospital bed made for 5’0 people, he had to move around to stretch his muscles. The pain from his clots must have been bad, and he would stretch his legs out so hard to the end of the bed frame. I knew he was uncomfortable. This new week brought more pain and discomfort, but Tye was a fighter. He had been in excellent health before the accident. He wasn’t a heavy drinker; oh he’d have a couple of beers on a Sunday to watch the football game, but nothing stronger, as he was tested all the time at work. He wasn’t a smoker and for that I was thankful. He looked tall and skinny lying in the hospital bed, but of good health. His good health had to play a big part in any recovery.
It had only been two days when one morning, (as I walked into ICU), they were inserting a ‘picc’ line into his left arm. When I asked why, the hospital staff replied, he had pulled out the stomach feed tube. I was alarmed, but not shocked. There was a small white gauze bandage on the hole where the stomach tube used to be. Now in his arm was a whole new set of lines. The picc line would allow all medicines, saline, (for not getting dehydrated) and food to be inserted into one line going into his body. What they didn’t tell me for many days, was that when he pulled out the stomach feed tube, it set up an infection. More antibiotics had to be given now. Clear plastic straps that were attached to his arms and legs were fastened to the edge of the bed rails. This was to help prevent any future pulling out of any medical lines or to help him to not fall out of bed. My heart was breaking each day that I saw my son lying in bed looking so helpless, hurt, and in pain. The swelling wasn’t going down and a yellow tone was coming over his whole body. They wrapped large inflatable bags around each leg to help with the clots, but when they took the bags off is when I saw more of his motorcycle injuries. The left knee looked terrible, but they just kept adding the burn cream onto that area. Both legs to the top area had long bright red markings and were bruised from just below the knee area clear down to his ankles. He even had bruises on his toes. Every area on his body was either swollen or bruised. He didn’t talk, he didn’t smile, and there was no communication other than a squeeze from his hand. He looked as if he was in a vegetative state, yet he would move his legs and arm.
The family came, saw and went home. Everyone by now had to get back to their jobs and their life, everyone but me. When my son’s life stopped, so did mine. I can remember family speaking to me of back home, (my house), and I couldn’t recall what it even looked like. I felt like I was in a time warp that had everything standing still. Nothing mattered, not home, not my dog and birds at home, nothing. Nothing but my boy laying in that bed in ICU who was still fighting for his life. There would be even more stress that would be accompanied with this tragedy and it would be the stress that comes from family and friends. The unbelievable comments, opinions and remarks from family and friends during a period of trauma. We were each traumatized and we all became affected in different ways. Each one in the waiting room took their turn at finding new ways to add even more stress to a situation already overflowing the brim.
Its amazing how one person’s life can affect so many. For some it was a positive time, and a learning experience for them to change their own life style. For others it became a time of past unresolved issues that were irrelevant. I recall looking around at all the people and watching their faces, I’m a good observer anyway, so viewing everyone’s reaction was interesting. Many tears were wept, but along with the tears was anger and frustration. Everyone had their version of the accident and what had happened, yet no one really had the right answers. Everyone assumed things which would later turn out to be incorrect. The 6 ½ hours of Tye lying in a corn field was bothering me. I felt I wanted, no needed, to go see what my son saw as he lay in a farmer’s field all night. What must he have thought while laying there beneath the sky and with the stars above him. Did he see anything, hear anything? Why didn’t anyone stop during the night? Why? Why? Why? Again so many why’s. I was having emotions unfold inside of me and I didn’t know how to deal with the questioning in my mind. My thoughts overflowed onto paper at the end of each day, but after writing my feelings down on paper, I wasn’t getting any answers. This was the worst thing that any person, any family could go through and we wanted answers. What was my son doing in this foreign place? What happened out in the darkness of that night on Eastern Colorado country roads that had left him with terrific injuries fighting to still have a pulse at daybreak? How did he stay alive one more day?
There was an afternoon that Tye moved his mouth trying to speak, but the heavy ventilator tube (size 6) was restricting any sound. I could understand “I Love You” from his lips and this gave me joy. I told him a thousand times that I loved him and that he would be ok. He tried to say something to me, but no one could hear or read lips well enough to understand him. The nurses were abrupt in yelling out, “You are in a hospital in ICU and you had a motorcycle accident”. Every time a nurse would say those words my heart sank. I didn’t know if even hearing the word ‘motorcycle’ would upset him.
Hospital staff (at this particular hospital) was also interesting to observe. There wasn’t one doctor in 6 days that came up to me, (the patient’s Mother), and told me anything at all. Any and all information was only from all the ‘nurses’ in the ICU unit. Under duress, I had to deal with hospital staff’s in competencies. I wouldn’t know to what degree of the in competencies until the days continued on. I lost my Mother 2 years ago in Oct. All of my family went their own way and lived their lives apart. Now there was a tragedy in the family that was very serious. Do you pick up the phone and call members of the family you haven’t spoken to in 2 years? I was totally focusing on the current family tragedy, my son’s life. Coming from of a small town in Northwest Colorado, word travels fast, so everyone was notified about my son’s acute physical condition without me doing a thing. I got a call from my sister that lived three states away from me. Nothing but the topic at hand was discussed and for that I was thankful again. I’m not a person that dwells on the past, so I didn’t want to hear anything of the past during this time. People made flight plans, drove 913 miles all to get to a farm town hospital to see for themselves the horrific physical condition of “Tye”.
I took a deep breath and walked my sister to my son’s ICU room. I had already told her of his injuries and I hoped that she could handle seeing him in this condition. It had been 2 years at my Mother’s funeral that she had seen him last. Approaching the bedside we both cried. There lay a young man that looked pale and needed a ventilator to help him breathe. The bruising was more pronounced and his forehead looked worse. His head swelling was starting to subside, but he still looked bad. He lay still and yet he did squeeze my sister’s hand. He knew the people that came to see him, by the touch and feel of their hand in his and by the sound of their voice. We assumed, he was just coming out of a coma.
The story told to us was that my son wasn’t to live through the night, nor upon hours after arriving to the hospital, yet he did. He survived for 6 ½ hours in a dark cold corn field all broken up. He made it through the surgery of having a ventilator and stomach tube inserted into him. He had everything going wrong, the pulling of the stomach tube had now set up an infection and more antibiotics had to be administered, yet one thing was going right; he had a will or something greater than we could explain that was keeping him alive. Just about the time we could see some light on healing, another death call comes upon him.
The Awakening part II, another death call comes….the story will continue.
