Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead (5 page)

I’
m just waking up when I hear a woman’s voice that apparently exists outside of any dream. “Brian, can you hear me?” I’d like to continue sleeping, but I feel someone tapping my chest as if knocking on a door. I open my eyes to find out what is happening.

Temporarily blinded by the room’s brightness, I see a small woman in a white lab coat standing on the left-hand side of my bed.

“There you are, Brian, good morning. My name is Dr. Kulkarni, and I work in physical medicine and rehabilitation. I heard from your nurses that you were able to smile yesterday. They even said that you could blink. Is this true?”

Without thinking, I shut my eyes, because I want to go back to sleep. But I then hurry to reopen my eyes. Why can’t I just keep them shut? At least the chest tapping has stopped.

“That’s wonderful—that blink. I’m here because I want you to perform some very minimal tasks. We’re going to start your physical therapy, and this is an evaluation to see what you’re capable of.”

One of my nurses comes in the room and walks near my bed as Dr. Kulkarni continues talking. The nurse takes a tubelike device and starts fiddling around with my breathing tube, which causes me to cough up the fluid blockage collected in my fragile lungs.

Dr. Kulkarni watches patiently as the nurse finishes cleaning out the gooey lung buildup. The nurse then inserts a new IV into my arm, and gives me “breakfast” through the drip feed tube that travels down my nose into my stomach.

“Can you smile for me?” Dr. Kulkarni asks in a curious tone. I try but am too weak to manage anything substantial. But she at least notices a hint of something. “Good job,” she says after the muscles in my face go slack again.

She walks over to my right side, holding a clipboard in her hand. She places her left hand under my right hand and raises it about an inch off the bed.

“Can you squeeze my hand?” she asks. I struggle to move my fingertips and wrap them around her hand. “Very good,” she says as she walks over to the left-hand side of my bed. She picks up my left hand and gives the same request. There’s no sensation in my left hand; it’s completely numb. “That’s okay, don’t worry. We were thinking this would happen, since your left shoulder suffered a lot of nerve damage from your accident, but you’ll be able to move it in a few years, and there’s a really good chance that you’ll have full recovery, too.”

A few years? What? She can’t be right, can she?

She’s busy writing stuff down on her clipboard, and then walks to the end of my bed. “Can you wiggle your toes?”

I try to focus my attention where my toes are attached, and once the mind-body connection is made, my toes move slightly.

“Now how about your feet? I’m going to put pressure on the front of your feet and I want you to push them forward. Okay?”

I stop wiggling my toes and try to push my feet forward. My ankles make a slight crackling noise and then a pop, and they move forward about half an inch. I try again and my feet move forward about an inch. “That’s great,” she says.

She then walks over to the left side of the room. I’m not sure what she is doing, though I hear her fiddling with some type of medical instruments. I try to move my head so I can see better, but my head can only rotate about an inch to the left, which is still an accomplishment, because yesterday I couldn’t move my head at all.

She walks back to my bed, pushing a little trolley with a machine that has a system of wires. A handheld remote-control gizmo lies next to it. “This is the last thing I’m going to do today,” she explains in a sympathetic voice. “This test is called an electromyogram and it will let me and your physical therapists know how your nerves and muscles are functioning and responding.” She pauses, and then picks up the remote-control device from the cart. “So what I’m going to do is send an electrical impulse to certain areas of your body to see if we can get a response. You may feel a slight amount of pressure that will be uncomfortable, but it will be over soon.” I like everything she just said, except the part about it being uncomfortable.

She applies a jellylike substance to various areas of my arms, legs, and shoulders. She brings the handheld device closer to my right arm. She presses a button and my arm jerks from the electrical shock.
Whoa, please don’t do that again
, I silently beg. She zaps my right leg and it automatically lifts off the bed several inches. This feels like torture. After several minutes of being zapped, I stare blankly at the ceiling.

“See, now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she says to me in a cheerful voice. Is she serious?

She walks over to one of my nurses, whom I don’t recognize, standing just outside my room and filling out a stack of paperwork. I can just barely hear their conversation because of the distance. Dr. Kulkarni asks her if I am able to speak. The nurse briefly looks my way. “Well, we really don’t know yet,” I hear her say. “There was evidence of a massive concussion from the crash. The fact that he’s still living is a miracle. He has been through so much already for the past month and a half. He had an incident a few weeks ago where his tracheotomy tube clogged up and he couldn’t breathe for several minutes. The lack of oxygen for his brain may have had a catastrophic effect. If he is able to speak one day, then that will be fantastic, but his overall mental capacity, if and when he comes out of the coma, is unknown.”

Huh?
This latest overheard news alert sends me furiously spiraling into panic mode. My heart is racing while trying to keep pace with my out-of-control thoughts. I have been here for a month and a half? How is that possible? I only remember waking up just a few days ago. Why did my parents tell me that I only had a few broken bones and that I would be out of here in a few days? Are they just trying to sugarcoat the fact that I might have suffered brain damage? This just doesn’t seem possible, because I’m thinking right now; I seem coherent. Don’t these people know I’m blinking on command and trying to smile and wiggle my toes? Isn’t that good enough evidence that my brain is working like it’s always worked, except that I can’t speak? And if I can’t get words to come out of my mouth, I will just have to learn sign language once I get more feeling back in my fingers. Whatever got me in this mess—and I still don’t know what accident everyone is referring to—I will not have it defeat me. Still, six weeks of my life have been excised like a giant tumor. Is this what amnesia is like? Or maybe I do have brain damage. I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life.

After she gathers up her instruments and clipboard, Dr. Kulkarni leaves the room. A nurse walks in right afterward. I move my eyes in her direction to see if I recognize her and I do. She’s smiling and is happy to see me. “Hi Brian, I’m Nurse Kimberly. Do you remember me?” I blink once in response. She looks over the gauges on my monitors and machines. She attaches a new bag of fluid for my IV, removes blood for testing, cleans out the buildup in my breathing tube, checks my catheter, wraps air-filled compression braces around my legs, and turns on the television. I tilt my head so I can see the screen. There’s a news program about the Iraq War on, and the screen is full of wounded soldiers and civilian victims from a mass suicide bombing.

I hear the water running in the sink and immediately start obsessing about getting a drink, just one lousy sip. It’s incredible how parched my throat feels.

I glance up at the clock. It is 10:43. I watch the second hand go around and around, every sixty seconds marking a different drink in my imagination. For the first minute, it’s a tall glass of ice-cold water. The next minute, it’s one of those plastic two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew that I used to consume in one long continuous gulp. And wouldn’t it be great if I could swim in a pool of lemon-lime Gatorade and take a drink every time I put my head below the surface? Then it’s onto ice-cold milk—so cold that it’s right at the threshold of freezing. Of course, I can’t leave out fruit juices—apple, orange, cranberry, pineapple. I’m so desperate for liquid salvation that even a sip from a puddle of dirty water would be a treat. Thinking about all the refreshing possibilities causes me to drool. Kimberly wipes my mouth off with a small towel.

Kimberly walks over and turns the volume of the television up. She begins to giggle. I look up at the television to see what she thinks is so funny. It’s a talk show and there is a blonde woman walking out on stage and waving to the audience. I squint to see if I have seen this show before and then realize that it’s Ellen DeGeneres. I’ve always been a big fan of Ellen’s talk show and her sitcoms. She starts dancing on stage. Her positive energy pumps up the audience. Watching Ellen, I’ve stopped thinking about being so thirsty.

Engrossed with Ellen, I almost don’t see my parents enter the room. They seem more relieved and less sad. My dad is carrying a small blue paper bag, and my mom is actually walking without a nurse holding her arm. She is clenching a tissue, but she is not crying. My dad asks me to blink and smile. I do both right away. He puts his fingers under my right hand and tells me to squeeze and I do. He then tells me to shake his hand, and I softly move his hand a few inches up and down.

He pulls the chair with the aqua cushion close to my bed and sits down. My mom stands on the right side of the bed. My dad says that he brought some of my favorite CDs, including the Omaha, Nebraska, rock band 311, along with a small foam globe. He says that by squeezing it several times a day, it will help reactivate the nerves and muscles in my hands that have been placed on standby. He gives the ball to my mom who places it in my right hand. I squeeze it a few times, which pleases them.

Kimberly walks in the room and greets my parents, then rechecks the various machines and monitors. When she’s done, she leaves. The Boyle family watches
Ellen
together. A little bit later, Kimberly comes back into my room. Following right behind her is another nurse who is pushing a stretcherlike table. It’s Victoria who gave me the sponge bath. My dad helps the two nurses position the contraption next to my bed.

The next thing I know, I am lifted onto this table. A soft dark red cushion covers it. Kimberly explains, “Brian, the table you’re laying on now is actually a chair and what we are going to do is tilt you up so your body gets used to sitting upright again. You’ve been on your back for quite a long time, so now we are going to gradually transition you to being upright because it is going to take some getting used to.”

Both nurses strap a safety restraint belt around my waist, tie my arms and legs down to both sides of the table, and gradually bring me forward. Pressure immediately builds in my lower back. My butt feels like it’s sitting on razors. The pain is intense. How long am I going to have to sit like this? I rapidly blink to get their attention, but they don’t understand what I’m trying to say.

All of a sudden, my body spasms from the excruciating pain. The seizure arrives with a frightening fury, throwing my limbs out of control. My mom screams in shock and darts out of the room while my dad looks on in horror. My mouth is spewing red foam and saliva. Right before I vomit, the room goes all black as if someone has flicked a switch and mercifully cast me into darkness.

I’m still stuck in an inclined position in this chair. The nausea hasn’t gone away. The room is spinning and I instantly throw up; disgusting vomit covers my hospital gown and bare arms and legs. The aggressive reflex from throwing up forces out the feeding tube that goes from my nose to my stomach. A nurse rushes into my room and cleans up the mess, changes my gown, and then leaves. Less than a minute later, she returns with a doctor who says that I now need another operation to replace the feeding tube. Why did I have to wake up and vomit?

Morning. The old feeding tube is curled inside a plastic bag waiting to be picked up. Long, black, and thin, it reminds me of a snake being threaded deep inside my gut.

My parents visit at eleven o’clock and we watch
Ellen.
When their visiting session ends, I nod and smile. I even wave goodbye with my right arm that I’m now able to raise about a foot and a half off of the bed. Right after they depart, I’m wheeled to the operating room to insert a new feeding tube. My typical entourage of ventilator, IVs, and various machines accompanies me through the hospital corridors.

A kindhearted nurse named Debbie tells me that the operation is going to be extremely uncomfortable. Her words elevate my stress. She says that the doctor will be inserting the tube into my nose and threading it all the way through my throat until it reaches my stomach. Special care must be taken to ensure that it does not pass through the windpipe and down into my lungs. The tube’s insertion must be done without anesthesia, so I need to be awake the entire time. Seeking to bolster my spirits, Debbie says that it would be great if I could blow my mom a kiss when I return from surgery.

I’m wheeled into a cold room where I’m positioned directly underneath a large X-ray machine. The doctor arrives and says he’s ready to begin. I’m not. I dread this procedure, so I shut my eyes as if I have the power to block out the imminent unpleasantness. Debbie holds my hand.

I feel the tube entering my nose, creating a faint tickling sensation followed by intense pressure in my nasal cavity. The tube winds down my throat, causing a fierce gagging reflex. “I have to back up and retrace my steps, because the tube is going down the wrong path,” says the doctor regretfully. He pulls it out about four inches and then starts down a different path. He stops again, pauses for a few seconds, pulls the tube back out about two inches, and pushes it back in forcefully creating a loud popping noise. This is pure agony. I stare at my tormenter, begging for his mercy. He answers my nonvocal pleading and tapes the end of the tube to my nose.