- Drugs
It was a normal Sunday night. My husband and I were lounging on the couch watching TV after wrangling our twin toddlers into bed. My phone rang and I saw it was my mom calling. I answered it expecting a routine conversation. It wasn’t. She was frantically crying, telling me she was picking me up and taking me to the hospital. “I think Brett is dead” was all I heard before I scrambled to my feet. I barely got the words out to my husband before I was slamming the door and running out to the street.
It was unfortunately an all too familiar car ride. This would mark our fifth drive to the hospital together, unsure if my little brother had finally taken that lethal dose of heroin. I drove, as my mom was crying too hard to be able to safely get us to the hospital. We ran in, told them who we were there to see, and they rushed us back into an enormous ER room.
A doctor came forth and immediately flooded us with questions, asking about any known drug use. My mom could not speak. Her eyes were locked on my brother’s lifeless body lying behind the doctor, surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of frantic nurses. Even the simplest questions were too complicated for her brain to process in that moment. She was frozen and she literally could not say a word. I told the doctor everything I knew about my brother and his drugs of choice.
You know that it is a critical case when you are escorted to your own private family waiting room. We sat in silence, in the tiny room waiting for my dad to get there. Our hearts raced anytime we heard footsteps in the hallway. We were approached by many friendly nurses, trying to make us more comfortable, but none of us could even muster up the ability to return their smiles.
When a doctor finally came in to explain to us what was happening, we were not left with much hope. Brett had been brought into the hospital with a core body temperature of 85 degrees. This is considered hypothermic. He was in septic shock, his lungs had collapsed, and he was in danger of renal failure. The doctors decided he was “down” anywhere from 6-12 hours, and his muscles had begun to break down, filling his body with so much lactic acid, that it was attacking and destroying his body.
The doctors said he was not breathing enough on his own to “sustain life” and the oxygen level in his blood was dangerously low. His organs, his body, his brain had all started to shut down. The probability of the doctors being able to revive him was not good. They told us that Brett was living minute-to-minute, barely clinging on. If he survived against the impossibly low odds, they said there was no telling how much brain damage he would have acquired and we should be prepared to look over and decide his living will.
The papers sat on the table in front of us. It felt like a sick joke. We were left again in silence. Would Brett want to live on a machine if he was declared brain dead? I felt myself panicking inside. Why did we have to decide this now? I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think…my brother was fighting for his life, unaware of what was happening, not a part of this huge decision about HIS life. We were left staring at this ridiculous piece of paper that would decide how to handle his death, and decide if we would be donating his organs.
After hours in a room that seemed to grow smaller by the minute, the doctors told us they had stabilized him enough to move him to ICU. We were taken to yet another private room to wait on the fifth floor. By this time we had more family with us, awaiting the inevitable news. The unsigned papers had followed us to this new room, sitting on a new table, still waiting on a decision and signature. The doctor came in shortly after we arrived to ICU, voice quivering, to tell us that Brett had gone downhill.
You could see in the doctor’s eyes that he was fully invested in this case. His face had turned 10 shades paler, his confidence had disappeared, and he spoke with a level of sympathy that made my heart race. I held my breath as he told us that the outcome didn’t look good. He told us he had pulled some strings, it was generally not allowed, but we could go into the room to be with him for a few minutes. We were told we could not get in the way of the doctors and nurses, and had to stay against the wall. These were what he expected to be our final moments with Brett.
As we stood helpless in Brett’s room, watching the doctors and nurses work over him, I remember my mom looking at me, her whole body shaking as she told me they were letting us in there for a reason and we needed to prepare ourselves that he wasn’t going to make it. We stood there in silence, staring at this person that we loved who was hooked up to more machines than you can imagine. We couldn’t do anything except watch and cry.
Once we were escorted back to our waiting room nobody could speak. All I can remember is everyone hugging and sobbing, incapable of doing anything else. You could hear nothing except for sniffling noses and escaped whimpers. This was it. After 10 years of struggling with addiction, he had finally done it. This was the end of his road; the end of his story. Even my strong father who had remained calm up until this point, a man I had only seen cry a handful of times in my life, was hunched over, crying like a child, unable to control his emotions. It seemed like we sat there for hours, exhausting ourselves, until we had nothing left.
As if by some divine intervention, at the moment we had all given up hope, the doctor walked in with a smile we had not yet seen. He was almost giddy. He could not explain it, he couldn’t understand it himself, but Brett was rapidly improving. It was as if he was still trying to convince himself of these changes as he explained to us what was happening. Did we know what his future would hold? No. Did we know how his quality of life would be? We had no clue. But as I looked around the room, it was like a weight had been lifted off of everyone’s shoulders, and now I saw different tears falling– tears of happiness. Brett had been saved by a miracle.
Brett was in a sedated coma for six days. The doctors had a hard time getting him off of the ventilator without risk of stress and heart attack. His heart function was abysmal. The doctors told us he would most likely have the heart quality of an 80 year old man, and the prospect of brain damage was too great to ignore. Brett continued to overcome each obstacle placed before him, constantly shocking the doctors and beating the odds over and over again.
A little over two weeks after having less than a 1% chance of surviving, Brett walked out of the hospital proving every theory wrong. His brain survived completely intact. His heart is weak, but continuing to improve. He was a miracle; the exception to the rule.
Brett is now looking at his life with a new appreciation. He has a purpose and he knows that this was his last chance. He is leaving his old life behind him and knows that one stumble could be his last. He is working towards a better life. A life of sobriety. His road to recovery is a long one, but I hope it will inspire others to get out of a life that could kill them and haunt their families forever. Loving an addict is heartbreaking, but we knew we couldn’t ever give up on him and I’m so glad we didn’t. I get my brother back now.