Like it was yesterday, everyday.
January 4, 2020. I sit here and stare at my son. My world. My purpose in life. I cannot stop thinking today about how amazed I am by the strength and courage of him. The journey he has been on and has been beating without even realizing. With the type and severity of his brain injury, a level 3 diffuse axonal injury to be exact, with every trama doctor and neurosurgeon, all of his team giving him a grim prognosis. I remember when they stood in his room and shook their heads and said what do we do now. They had seen the scenario before. They wouldn’t tell me at first because it may be to overwhelming they said. Truth was he probably would not live, if he lived he may never make it out a vegetative state, if he did make it beyond vegetative he would have severe deficits both physical and cognitive. Poor quality of life if any life. Being his mother I absorbed what they told me but I was in extreme shock. How could it be? My 19 year old boy, in an auto accident mid afternoon on a Monday, on the brink of death. Unresponsive, in a coma, the lowest number possible on the Glasgow Coma Scale upon entry of the emergency room and TICU. Brain swelling that was growing by the minute, for days it swelled, a craniotomy to allow the brain room, room to do what, kill him? Possibly. But he fought ever so bravely yet ever so quietly. The swelling subsided enough to not take his life, but now the question was what would his life be…he still slept in the deepest form for 11 days. We waited and prayed and wept. He needed to be prepared for the long haul. They needed him on long term life support because they all believed he would need it. To sustain his life while in a coma he was given a trach and feeding tube. Nothing more could be done now. The doctors said it was up to him and his brain and he slept still. The morning of Dec. 20th this was the morning after the trach and peg surgery I whispered in his ear today is day 1, now you fight, you fight for your life. I was not prepared for him to sleep forever, I would not accept the future the doctors prepared him for even though I knew how much of a reality it could be. I knew that he needed to hear it from me that it was time to fight. He woke up that day. Not awake like “Hi, mom!” But awake as in his eye lids opened but his eyes didn’t move. He was frozen in a way that I cannot describe. But his fingers crept to mine and the battle began for him. He fought through ICU delirium/confusion from the coma for 3 days and then every hour of everyday since then has been a gut-wrenching, breath holding, RLA scale roller coaster of emotions. New medications to help him battle his own brain storms. His brain was battling his body, pulse, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing rate, nothing seemed to function properly and he continued to fight. And now….while I sit here he so calmly plays on his phone, shrugs his shoulders, asks me and everyone else when he can go to rehab or home, when he can have a drink, tells me he loves me in his own quiet way, video chats and messages me to wake me up all hours of the night after I go to the hotel to sleep, gives the nurses crap about being late for his medicine, plays chess, watches the Office and Spongebob I smile and stare in utter amazement at the miracle before me. The trama doctors show him off to other doctors, everyone knows Craig, the miracle in room 6. He wonders and asks why everyone including the doctors stare at him and cry and hug me. I tell him because even though you only have been here “8” days that we have all been here longer and we remember the things that you forgot and that you are more remarkable than you will ever realize. He then goes back to his new normal and it is incredibly similar to his old normal. He shrugs his shoulders, smiles, signs or mouths I love you and then asks me when he can leave because he is fine. He left the Geisinger Trama ICU after 31 days. Then the UPMC Trama Rehab after 2 weeks. In the months after he transitioned back to his life. He began to drive again, he returned to work, he visited friends and family and eventually moved into an apartment with his fiance. His brain healed, his bones mended, he lives, he breathes and he continues to survive. His scars and trauma remain. I stare in amazement often, I still cry, my heart breaks for others, my heart breaks for him. I know he struggles it’s unimaginable how hard it must be for him. He rarely speaks of it and never let’s on that he is struggling. As his mother I see and I remind him that I will always be there for him.
