The beginning...

Its been nearly five years now since Ben's accident on 4/16/2002. Evelyn, my wife and Ben's Mom, heard about a bad accident on the radio on her way to work but never thought that it would be part of our family involved in it. Since I work the night shift, I was at home sleeping.
The pictures here and on Ben's website of the accident were taken by a news helicopter for one of the local TV stations.

After Evelyn and I received word to go to the hospital, we both drove there as quickly as possible. When I arrived Evelyn and Michelle, Ben's fiancé, were both with Ben. He was in the ICU hooked up to life support and in a deep coma. A tube ran from his mouth to a ventilator to breath for him. An ICP monitor was hooked to signal when his cranial pressure was too high and meds were needed to lower it.

The doctors gave me a grim report on Ben's condition. They weren't sure if he would make it. With such a violent accident, shearing of the brain nerves is a real possibility. Shearing is caused by the violent head movement that can take place during an accident. The nerves of the brain can be literally stretched and ripped. This can result in death or a persistent vegetative state. Miraculously, Ben had no other life threatening injuries that were evident. Much later during his therapy he was found to have a broken collar bone that had gone undetected.

Each day the doctors told us how hopeless Ben's prognosis was. Ben would respond with abnormal posturing in response to stimuli. The doctors would then give us a percentage of chance of recovery. Each day the number would get a little lower. We were at Ben's bedside almost constantly. After a week Ben began to open his eyes. He didn't seem to see anything but we thought it was a good sign. Since Ben wasn't tracking objects with his eyes the doctors saw this as another bad sign. Finally we had to make a decision. Ben couldn't be left with an ventilator tube in his mouth and a feeding tube in his nose much beyond ten to fourteen days or strictures would begin to form around the tubes making their removal very difficult. A tracheostomy had to be done and a G-tube inserted.

We knew that Ben did not want to be kept alive in a vegetative state indefinitely. He was the charge nurse at a nursing home and had told us before that he wouldn't want to live that way. On the other hand, we knew that Ben is a fighter and wanted to give him a chance to pull through this. Our decision was complicated by the doctors and even the chaplain encouraging us to "let him go". We decided that two weeks from the accident was too soon to make an irreversible decision, in spite of what the doctors were telling us. A permanent trache and G-tube were placed allowing the tubing to be removed.

more to come...