04/01/08

Chapter 9

Glasgow Coma Scale 11,

Still Moderate Brain Injury

(excerpt)

Elaine and her son arrived early to visit Libbi on her thirteenth day in the hospital. Before entering the ICU, Elaine again warned Mike that his sister may be active, more violently so than he’d ever seen her. “Or she may just be laying there, still, like a doll.”

            Going by the nurses’ station, Elaine introduced her tall, handsome, wavy-haired son, “all the way from Maine to see his sister.”

            The two nurses smiled at Mike and Elaine and then, as mother and son passed to Libbi’s room, looked at each other expectantly with raised eyebrows, slight head tilts, and down-turned lips. They had a good idea of what was to come.

            Elaine’s warnings were insufficient to prepare Libbi’s oldest brother for the scene. Seeing all the lines from the machines and dripping bags that led to his sister’s body, which was lifeless for the moment, and the restraints on her arms and legs, it was all somehow a surprise despite the forewarning. Mike crumpled to the floor in a wave of emotion—like he had taken a physical blow—and he lay there sobbing with abandon.

When she saw Mike break down, Elaine felt the blow too, yet she had to be strong for her twenty-three-year-old son right now. She didn’t cry. She didn’t collapse. She hadn’t cried since Dr. Robinson reported the news of Libbi’s condition in the early evening of July Fourth.

            An ICU nurse watching Mike’s reaction remembered last week’s episode of the little girl being removed from life support, and the sob after sob that choked her older brother as he held her.

            Elaine and the nurse helped Mike up from the floor and supported him to a chair in the nurses’ station outside Libbi’s room, where he continued crying a minute longer.

            Once Mike regained a bit of his composure, he wondered what he expected to see, why it was all a surprise. His mom had told him of everything he saw, had described his little sister’s condition. Yet when he saw her in her comatose state, he knew that earlier words could not equip him with what he needed. Nothing could prepare him. Elaine used her method of description as best she could, but preparing Mike to see Libbi was like calling a friend on vacation and telling him his house has been flattened by a tornado: Until he sees the devastation first-hand, he may not comprehend the severity of the destruction. Mike knew what to expect upon first seeing his sister but was totally unprepared for the reality of the situation.

(2nd excerpt)

Soon after his initial reaction, Mike became accustomed to his sister’s set-up and spent over twenty-four hours at the hospital visiting her each hour or two. He and his Grandpa Mike were in to see her together when her left arm restraint came loose. She lightly banged the safety railing at the side of the bed while their grandpa stroked her right hand and said, “Come on and come back with us, Lib. You gotta come back with us.”

            Elaine and her son went in to see Libbi the next hour, and a nurse said to them, “Oh, hey, we gave her a cherry popsicle today.” She smiled. “I mean, we put it in her hand. She fed it to herself just fine—well, she did get it all over her face, but that’s to be expected at this stage. We’ll keep it up for a couple more days to see if she does well with it consistently, and then she’ll be ready for solid foods.”

            “Already? While she’s still in ICU?” Elaine questioned.

            “Already,” the nurse answered with a wink. She shook her head and continued, “I don’t think she’ll be in ICU much longer.”

            Elaine and her son were awed at what the nurse had told them. Both Libbi’s first doctor, Dr. Robinson, and Dr. Goldfein painted the blackest picture for the family: “She’ll probably not survive,” then “she’ll survive but likely in a vegetative state,” then “she might regain consciousness but be partially paralyzed.” Now this nurse was telling them she would move from the ICU within the foreseeable future? They found it hard to believe though they wanted to desperately.

E-mail the author at libbi@elizabethevansfryer.com.