Just Raven

Sometimes life really sucks. Some people seem to get a real bad hand dealt upon them.

At work over the weekend, I took care of a very young man who was in an auto accident. The accident happened right after Thanksgiving. He was a passenger in the back seat; the driver was intoxicated. Hitting a tree at 50 mph. the young man was ejected over 75 feet. Onto the pavement.

Here we are 2 1/2 months later; he is still in a coma. His mother stays with him 24/7; she refuses to except the coma state and thinks her son is asleep. He has a tracheotomy;
central line; a JPEG tube feeding him and various other catheters and tubes coming out of his body.

His Glasow Coma Scale ratings have been hovering right around 3…With 15 being like you and me-3 is SEVERE BRAIN INJURY.

The kid is 17 years old and had his whole life ahead of him. His girlfriend comes to see him every weekend, and she wonders if he will “wake up” in time to bring her to the Prom in May.

His Dad is there every day, but goes home at night to work. He is always telling his son to “Wake up, we need to fix your car”…

I have been in this line of work for years and I have seen many young people in coma’s come out of it…In relatively decent shape. But this kid-I don’t know. He has a certain postering and absolutely NO response to anything we do. Rolling a pen across his fingernail-and pushing down hard-(causes me to yell out and leaves a nice bruise on my nail)-when we did it to the kid, as part of the coma assessment, he did not react at all. No eye movement, no wincing, nothing. I hope I am wrong, but I think this kid is going to be remain comatose for the rest of his life. Which could be as long as he would have lived without being in the accident. Such a waste of a life. A handsome young man with dreams and desires and fears and loves. All in there, somewhere. Maybe never to come out.

I was in tears everytime I moved him around in his bed; every hour we were in his room turning him; emptying tubes and canisters and providing tube feedings. Cleaning his trach site and changing his linens; checking vital signs and providing mouth care. Moving each of his limbs through a series of exercises to keep them from becoming stiff and contracted; his arms are already casted due to slight contracures. Of course, he cannot do ONE thing for himself. He is in a deep coma.

Nursing staff are “taught” not to get emotional while taking care of patients. There is a professional line, a boundary, we are expected to stay behind. No matter how we feel, we are not supposed to show any feelings. Sort of like being told to be a robot. Well this robot cried all weekend. And so did my co-robots. It is WAY too hard to see this young man like this. Up above his bed, above the oxygen tanks and tubes, are lots of family pictures. We saw lots of smiles, a family eating a turkey dinner just three days before the accident; a picture of a young man with his girlfriend…

Its a shame. DON’T. DRINK. AND. DRIVE. Or get in a car with a drunk driver…By the way-everyone else in that accident is fine.