Part 4 – A Sense of Relief
(in case you missed it: part 1, part 2, part 3)
Saturday night slowly turned into Sunday morning. Every breath remained a conscious effort and each one was becoming more of a challenge, time was going to run out. We finally received news that the airplane was on its way to get me and there was a sense of relief in knowing how much longer I needed to fight. Fortunately, I was able to hang on and continued breathing on my own without requiring a tracheotomy.
The flight team arrived on a Lear jet around 11 AM and I immediately felt more relief, I was going to make it. The crew had done their homework and based on my injuries and condition, they gave my mom a choice of three destinations: Miami, Cleveland, or Columbus. We chose Columbus and we were going home.
Once they had me boarded on the airplane I knew everything was going to be okay. My mother on the other hand, wasn’t so sure. She hates to fly to begin with and a Lear jet is kind of small. She recounts that the seat that she was sitting in was loosened from the floor and there was no bathroom. After we were in the air, the crew told us that they would get us there as fast as they could, which meant we would probably have to fly through Cuban airspace… without permission. Mom was more than a little pale in her wobbly chair as we flew through Cuban airspace. We made it to Miami in an hour, landed to refuel the jet, and an hour after that, we were landing in Columbus.
Mom said that it was so windy in Columbus that the mattress pad blew off the gurney as they were wheeling it out onto the runway. I remember being asked some questions as we came into the ER at Grant Hospital. A lot of them were the same questions that were asked when I first woke up in Mexico. Then the first dose of morphine was administered and I was out like a light.
When I woke up a few hours later in ICU there was a girl that had been in a car accident in the bed next to mine. She was screaming about being in pain and wanted more pain relievers. Right or wrong, I couldn’t help thinking to myself, you have good medication, you have no idea what pain is. I listened to her carry-on for about 45 minutes before falling back to sleep.
The next thing that I remember was the team that came in to put on my Halo. Again, screws being twisted into my head, this time in four spots. The difference in this one was that, my skull didn’t crack and pop like the first one. It was more like having someone squeeze your head in a vice relentlessly. More medication, more sleep.
Dr. Brackle came in later to tell me how he was going to conduct the surgery on my neck. I can remember a few close friends and family members coming in to see me. They were all instructed to keep it together and have a positive attitude. You could see in their faces how hard they were trying.
My girlfriend at the time had come back from Las Vegas where she was spending her spring break. Some of my closest friends were in Florida that week and they came back early as well. The outpouring of support was amazing.
I had surgery on Monday morning to repair the broken vertebrae in my neck. On Tuesday, I was stable enough to be transported to Ohio State’s Dodd Hall, where I would spend the next three months in rehab. My new life was just beginning and, just as the Holy Spirit said, it would be very different.
Thank you for reading our series. God has been so faithful in this journey. If you haven’t already, please consider sharing this website with friends to share how God uses trials in our lives to grow us up into the character of Jesus. If you have already shared or contributed, thank you!