Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead (12 page)

I
have only been at Kernan five days, but I’m going home today. Our health insurance provider decided to cut short the length of my stay because it thought that my rehab could be done at much lower cost through twice-weekly outpatient treatment. I can’t wait to leave Kernan even though I’m still in bad shape. I can walk maybe ten to fifteen feet unaided, with someone on the other end of the restraint belt just in case I fall. I can bicep-curl two and a half pounds with my right arm and bench-press a broomstick. But apart from the lovely Jamie, the therapists and nurses are much less friendly than those at Prince George’s Hospital where I was treated like royalty. At Kernan, I feel like I’m just another anonymous patient in its body-mending factory about to be spat out into the world as a defective product. I feel sorry for those like Tony who have languished here for months.

My parents are excited as they pack my wheelchair, clothes, walker, and the rest of my belongings in Dad’s pickup truck for the two-hour trip. On the drive home, they tell me how they’ve set up the downstairs so I can get around. Though I’m no longer stuck in a hospital and getting poked with needles, I still have a very long road of recovery looming ahead. I have no idea what the future will be like. I can only focus on the present. I look out the window, watching the soft, cotton-white clouds float by in the bright blue sky. I feel the warmth of the sun on my face slightly magnified through the glass window. I roll down the window so the fresh air can penetrate the deepest spaces in my weakened lungs. The humid summer air is mixed with the car exhaust and diesel fumes from the other vehicles on the road. I inhale deeply, missing the smell of the real world that bypassed me this summer.

Sitting in the front passenger seat and gazing out the window, I know I am returning home. But what exactly am I returning to? I sourly reflect upon two athletic goals I had made at high school graduation. I was all set to swim for St. Mary’s College. Now it’s doubtful that I’ll ever be able to swim again, considering the damage done to my shoulder, pelvis, and lungs. I had also wanted to compete in an Ironman triathlon. But instead of swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles, and running 26.2 miles, my new triathlon will consist of brushing my teeth, combing my hair, and using the toilet by myself.

I lower my eyes to meet the outside side mirror. My face looks thin, pale, and haggard. I don’t look eighteen, but more like a tired eightyeight-year-old man. My cheekbones are practically poking through my skin. I barely have any fat left in my face. My nose looks like skin wrapped tightly over cartilage. Dark circles cradle my bloodshot eyes. I must learn to accept the foreign me.

As we begin driving down our street, my parents warn me that the wrecked Camaro is parked in the driveway near the woods that border our house. It was towed there after the accident. I nervously shoot a glance at the crumpled black hulk as we approach it. Where a driver’s seat used to be is gone, pancaked out of existence.

My dad parks and carries me into the house, down the hallway and then toward the living room where he places me carefully on the couch. After bringing in the rest of my stuff from the truck, he goes upstairs to my room and brings down the mattress and bed frame into the living room. This will be my new bedroom. My dad moves the couch to the left side of the bed where my mom is going to sleep, and he aligns the reclining chair to be on the bed’s right side. This is where he is going to sleep. Even though I don’t have twenty-four-hour nurses anymore, I am sandwiched between two very concerned parents. I feel finally safe, at peace.

I’m amazed at how different the house looks. All the walls have been recently painted but every room seems to be in total chaos—clothes thrown all over the floor, papers scattered across tables. I ask my mom what happened, and she explains that all their focus has been on me. I feel a small surge of guilt but realize how utterly dependent I am on them for everything. I still need their help to make the short walk to the bathroom. I try to use the cane, but my balance is shaky and not to be trusted.

One of my biggest worries is how much weight I have lost. I went from 230 pounds to 130 pounds. Most of that hundred pounds was muscle. Being bulked-up might have saved my life. I heard a doctor once remark that my body had been feeding off all the muscle mass when I was in the coma. Another doctor mentioned that my extra body weight at the accident site gave my internal organs cushion from the several tons of impact that slammed into the left side of my body.

So there are two things that require immediate addressing: gaining back the weight and building up muscles. It’s too early for my system to start gulping down protein shakes like I used to do for quick weight gain before track season. So I start with the muscles. With my parents watching television, I begin doing the seven different arm and leg exercises like I did at Kernan.

I slowly go through the first set, experiencing the familiar burning sensation of inactive muscles being worked. I push past the intense pain, but I know I must force myself to be even tougher than when “no pain, no gain” was my mantra as a weightlifter and swimmer. This is a different kind of pain, because my survival and independence depend on it. Unrestricted by the fluorescent, antiseptic confines of the hospital—no more needles, paralysis, seizures, life support, being fed through a tube—I now have to take control of my own destiny. But how is this even possible? How far am I willing to go in order to repair my shattered body?

After my workout is done, the day’s excitement has tired me. I try to fall asleep but I can’t get comfortable in my bed. I’ve become so used to stiff, crinkly hospital mattresses, where every move your body makes sounds like you’re lying upon a wrestling mat covered in potato chips. I’m disappointed because I’ve been looking forward to sleeping in my soft bed, but the box springs are pushing into my spine and when I turn over, gravity puts too much weight on my back, which causes problems with my breathing.

I finally discover a comfortable position by lying upon my back with my arms spread out to the sides, which is the position I was forced to adopt in the hospital because I usually had IVs in both arms and a blood pressure cuff. My mattress crucifixion comes home.

I wake up several times throughout the night, tossing and turning, expecting to be accosted at any minute by a nurse ready to jab a needle in my arm to take blood. Then I hear the sound of the lawn mower start up. It’s not a dream. I glance at the clock. It’s 3:00 a.m. I look over at my mom; she’s still asleep. But my dad is gone. He’s outside mowing the lawn in pitch darkness. Has he lost his mind?

I’ve been away from the computer all summer. And not by choice. I’m curious what awaits me in the email inbox. Holding onto the walls for support, I hobble over to the den to my computer. My mom brings me in a pillow because my tailbone remains sensitive.

The moment I sign onto AOL Instant Messenger, I find messages from everybody—friends, relatives, and strangers who have been following my progress on the website that my Uncle Chip and Aunt Lisa put together when I was in the hospital. I’m overwhelmed by their concern and support.

While juggling several simultaneous conversations, I check the email but there are so many unread messages in the inbox that the computer crashes. I reboot the system and locate several hundred emails. As I begin reading the messages, I become emotional and start crying. These emails touch my heart, the same heart that a collision with a dump truck on July 6 rudely shoved across my chest, the heart that stopped beating in Intensive Care, the heart that somehow managed to keep me alive through the infections and coma, the heart that is beating now so that I can sit at my computer and read these wonderful words.

From my high school principal, Garth Bowling, on July 27, 2004:

Mom and Dad, in 1977, on their way to a Led Zeppelin concert. My eighteenth year didn’t go as well as theirs.

Dad had an extensive record collection of rock classics. Here I am at four years old, listening.

Summer of 2001, my sophomore year, age fifteen, when I began my competitive high school swimming career. One of the best choices I ever made.

Swimming laps. I really miss my high school swimming days; there were a lot of great memories.

Getting ready to throw the discus in a high school meet in May 2004, which was about a month and a half before the accident. I bulked up to 230 pounds at this point in the season.

High school graduation day. I was really proud of what I had accomplished both academically and athletically. I was ready for the future, or so I thought.