I am alive

At 11:30 pm, AirMed landed with me at the University of Utah.  I was rushed to surgery immediately for a subdural hematoma, an epidural hematoma, and lots of bleeding from my head. The head of the neurology unit, Dr. Caldwell, performed the surgery. He called my dad after the surgery was done, and told him what had happened. There is a scale used for head trauma patients, called the Glasgow coma scale. It measures the eye movements, verbal sounds, and motor movements. The scale goes from three to eighteen, with eighteen meaning that you are a regular person. When I reached the University of Utah, I was a three, meaning that I was dead according to anyone who saw me at that point. Three is the lowest number of points available. Dr. Caldwell did not offer a lot of hope for my situation, and merely stated that miracles happen, and the only reason he operated on me was because I was of the age when it would happen. He said that the first 12 hours would be very critical, and made it sound like the next 24-48 hours were pretty serious as well.

            My family got to the University of Utah and pushed their way up to the Neuro ICU. The escort met them at the ICU and took them to the surgery recovery room, where I was located. The only thing that was recognizable to my mom was that my toenails had been painted pink. She remembered from the weekend at the cabin that they were the same. Other than that, I was very swollen and hooked up to a lot of tubes, and even a breathing machine because I was being heavily sedated. My mom and Colby were able to get somewhat of a response from kissing me and talking to me. However, my mom soon learned that with head trauma, the thing to first do when the brain is as swollen as mine was is to keep my surroundings as quiet as possible, to make sure that my brain did not swell any more. I was given a blessing from my dad and uncle, and at 6 a.m., my family was asked to leave until 8 a.m. for rounds.

            The first day in the ICU, I got a lot of visitors, flowers, and cards. There were many people who were praying for me and sending their love. Sometime during the day, the nurses did the major task of transporting me to the scanner. They said that the scan was better than could be expected. They were encouraged but guarded.

            Around dinnertime, my parents decided to break the fast that they had been doing since they heard about the accident. A lot of my family gathered to help break the fast, and my uncle that my parents hadn’t talked to for several years because of an argument that they had over money was asked to offer the prayer. The prayer was very nice, and there was not a dry eye in the group.

            My parents talked to their stake president about whether or not to tell Taylor about what was going on while he was serving his mission in Armenia. He called around 8:00 at night, and the family gathered in the car to talk to him, because in the hurry to pack, a cell phone charger had been left at home.  Taylor and Dad decided that if I died, he would not return home for the funeral, and made arrangements to keep in contact. It was understood that I needed his prayers too, along with everyone else.

A visit with me at this time usually made people feel better about the situation. Being a doctor for ten years, my dad had seen many people who, by the books, should not have pulled through alive, but somehow they did. Of course, the opposite is also true. But my parents were feeling that somehow, I was going to make it through alive, because of promises that had been made to me in previous blessings, and because of inspiration and feelings that they were having at the time.

            My parents were very nervous to leave me unattended, but were also tired from being awake for so long at the beginning of everything going on. They wanted to find somewhere super close to the hospital, so they could be available if necessary. Fortunately, there is a hotel on University Hospital grounds that even offers a discount for people who are there for a medical reason. University Guest House became a home away from home for my family.

            However, my brothers took a shift in the waiting room for the night that my parents went to the Guest House at first. They were still nervous to leave me alone, and the nurse said that they don’t like to have people in the patient rooms for the night, so they settled on the waiting room. For a while, my family was watching the numbers that measured my Inter-Cranial Pressure like hawks. 

The fact that I was able to survive this accident is truly a miracle. For years after I left the Neuro ICU, the nurses there would have days of discouragement, and they would always use my story as a reminder that miracles happen on occasion. At the beginning, Dr. Caldwell's prognosis was pretty grim. But every time that he saw me, he would just shake his head and say that it was a miracle that I survived. I can definitely say that because of fasting and priesthood blessings, I was able to survive the accident.