After speaking with Carson, he wanted to include our thoughts as parents in his journey. I was initially reluctant since our family has been traditionally private, but it is part of what is happening. We fully understand that Carson is at "ground zero", but there are ripples that extend far out that put us as parents in a different world than he is experiencing. Everybody in the family is grieving at a different pace, sometimes dramatically so. I hope to capture some of this from our perspective. We now share the experiences of those parents and children who have already been though similar ordeals, and hope to assist those who will follow. This isn't a sympathy seeking effort, but rather an attempt to capture some of how this injury has impacted living. Hopefully sharing this will have some benefit somewhere. It's long, so if you want to check out now, feel free.
How do you describe an event that took approximately 2 seconds to occur that would alter life so dramatically? As a parent, how do you bring some sort of closure to having a 6'4"+, 200 lb son, superb athlete, gifted musician, full of hope in the prime of life, to now watching him struggle to even roll over? As Carson said two days ago, "I feel like a little baby again----learning to roll over and wearing a diaper." I have to slink off into a dark corner to fight back tears. I have often thought that a death may be easier to deal with than watching him struggle day after day to even move his body around. The fact is I can't stand to watch him suffer. The nights immediately following the injury are the worst. You wake up abruptly about every 30 minutes and your heart feels like it will jump out of your chest as the fog of sleep burns off to the realization that your son is paralyzed. You clock watch until it is evident that you'll never sleep and finally get up to wander the house like a zombie trying to figure out why this had to happen, the whole time lamenting the myriad of losses for your son. Your brain screams, "This isn't supposed to happen us!" Why? Then you snap back to reality and think, "We have no special status; why not?" The guilt-inducing "woulda, coulda, shoulda" vein of thinking further intrudes into the situation. You magically think that somehow you should have had some sort of impression, some small tidbit of information or break in the sequence of events that would have altered the final outcome. Nonsense. Sometimes there just aren't any answers and you feel like you're losing your mind because there is no way out, no option for you or your son. The carnage is done, deal with it. The accident replays in your head night after night--play, rewind, play--and the heartbreak stings the same each time. It's like standing on the beach looking at the expanse of the ocean along the horizon, intimidating, full of power. The emotional waves of anguish come to shore, time after time, no stopping, no pausing, steady, and there isn't a lousy thing you can do about it. You are totally powerless. You may get distracted and even forget for a second about what has happened, but when you remember, it is like someone hitting you in the face with a bat. It is surreal. You get a report over the phone from a technician in the middle of the initial surgery to decompress Carson's spine who provides real time updates. He relates that the procedure is progressing and that the surgeon is placing cadaver bone into your son's neck while you hear the bone saw screaming in the background. Days later, you look into the surgeon's eyes as he approaches you in the waiting room after a second 5 /1/2 hour surgery to remove the exploded bone fragments from your son's neck. You're looking for some nonverbal cue in his face that will hint of a favorable prognosis of walking again. The whole process is so FRAGILE. Small words either sink you or keep you afloat. You think, "Come on, Doc, throw me a bone---tell me something positive!" It's a hammer blow to the stomach to hear his words as if they're slowed down, "The spinal cord is severely damaged." Another surge of adrenaline and your boat starts to take on water again.. Hurry up and wait is the order of the day for any future prognosis. As crazy as it sounds, you are totally overjoyed to see your child in the Surgical Intensive Care Unit looking like a pin cushion, drainage bags full of blood, sucking sounds from suction machines, bells, beeping devices, people shuffling in and out checking him, rolling him over, tubes in several orifices, and you're happy he is alive. You go home exhausted with vampire eyes deep into the night and the whole process starts again whenever you open them. You watch your younger children play and laugh and are grateful of the insulating buffer of youth and innocence, but they exhibit things you haven't seen before. Emotions run high and everything is heightened--anxiety, anger, restlessness, physical complaints, not wanting to go to school or do sports. I watch my nine year old daughter old faint in the ICU while holding Carson's hand, stating to me after I catch her before she hits the ground, "Daddy, I can't see or hear anything" when I hold her up. And she faints again, totally perplexed as to why. Thirty minutes later she's running and playing in the hall, again swept away in the magic of youth. I watch my youngest son rise to the occasion when the pressure is on, delivering stellar grades amidst the chaos, but feeling restless and cagey at home, often remaining safely distant when we visit Carson. I contact my 20 year old son serving and LDS mission in Florida to deliver the bad news. Somehow he knew it was coming, he says. He takes it standing up and knows his brother is up to the fight, resolute in his assessment of the situation and filled with faith. As I complete this sick notification chain by contacting my oldest and his wife in Washington D.C., I can't help but think of the comment by the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer where he quotes the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita following the first successful atomic bomb detonation in White Sands New Mexico......"I am become death, destroyer of worlds." I can't escape my 17 year old daughter fully feeling the results since she also witnessed the accident, and tell her that her birthday just four days after isn't going to happen and that she needs to focus on returning to school and trying to establish a routine once again. We watch her sleep her birthday away on the ICU waiting room couch only to return to the house later the same night to find a birthday banner across the garage door, the house and her room fully decorated by her friends and church leaders, paper hearts cut out and placed all through the house with encouraging writings from friends, coaches and leaders on them. You are grateful for the goodness of people and the depth of compassion that is shown and you watch her eyes fill with tears. You have to rise to the occasion and once again establish a family routine. Trying to act normal for younger children is remarkably difficult when your heart is heavy. It's like being in acting school. You know you have to go back to work when you really want to be by your child's side. It is no mystery now why you have anxiety when the Life Flight helicopter passes over the house like it has hundreds of times previously over the years, only this time en route to pick up someone else in their time of need. The repeated nights spent in the hospital have a numbing effect. You watch your child's body respond to paralysis, being totally helpless to abate his misery, and instead feeling like some impotent bystander while he begs for the pain to stop due to the electrical firestorm of nerve pain that rages in his body. Fevers, blood pressure problems, nausea, vomiting, the threat of pneumonia and aspiration that could easily kill him, sickness, urinary tract infections, bed sores. You nearly go crazy and think, "Now what was I worried about before in life?" It all seems trivial now and totally insignificant. In the night when I'm sleeping next to his bed I hear him gasp for air with an oxygen mask on, pleading, "Dad, can you help me?" We watch his friends also take turns spending the nights with him, talking to him, soothing him, just being present so that he knows someone is there. Watch dogs resolved in their duty. Where do they get their commitment? Visitors come and you see their countenance change when they see the wreckage, the disheveled body with hollowed out eyes and 35 lbs of weight loss. Your marriage is strained due to grieving at a different pace, and you have to divide and conquer the growing and endless list of things to be done, feeling like ships often passing in the night or early morning. You have to accept reality despite spiritual and philosophical late night discussions about suffering, why bad things happen to good people, whether god intervenes, the randomness of events vs. a purpose to everything. It gets complicated. Too complicated. Must simplify. Waters are muddied as you try and figure out the big picture, but one thing is a constant reality: your heart aches in an indescribable way for your child and there seems to be no relief in sight.
And then spider rays of light get through.....
It comes through people. It comes in the form of nurses and other medical care givers who are there for a reason. Their optimism. If you only knew how you affected your patients! It comes from the two physicians who visited Carson early on and asking him what he wanted to accomplish. When Carson told them he wanted to play the piano and flute, they looked at each other and stated, "I think we can make that happen." Carson's spirits soared. It comes in the form of letters written by friends, family, leaders, mission presidents, the people he served in Chile, and even people who he hasn't met. I watch my son shed tears from closed eyes as these letters are read to him. He feels your love and prayers. It comes in the form of immediate family who provide blessings and endless support. They have known him well as a little boy and know our family needs, and his needs, as brothers and sisters, grandparents, and extended family. I watch my 93 year old father visit Carson in the ICU, his old battle hardened hands that have known loss, war and despair beyond measure, take my son's hand while whispering, "We'll never quit." My father in law goes on a 48 hr. fast even as a diabetic and in poor health, to exercise faith, perhaps at his own peril. It comes through having food dropped off at the house and the confidence in knowing that your neighbors and church ward members will take care of things behind the scenes that you couldn't possibly attend to. The outpouring of love is staggering to us. The monetary contributions simply fill us with gratitude and reduce the anxiety and pressure of changes that will inevitably be mandatory to the home and environment. The light comes through others fasting and praying----on Sundays---on New Year's Eve, while the rest of the world celebrates through food and drink. It comes through visitors like Luke and Sydney Jepson. Luke was completely paralyzed when he rolled his truck some 4 years ago and simply comes in to visit, never having known Carson. He delivers his experience to a silent packed room of visitors and concludes his story by getting out of his wheel chair and standing tall like the phoenix rising from the ashes. Can't let hope die. Hope comes through the rehabilitation team led by who is arguably the finest spinal cord injury physician in the intermountain west. No rosy picture here or unrealistic outcomes. They work Carson hard and he works hard. The two physical therapists remind me of the "dynamic duo" who will teach my son new ways of doing old things, constantly pushing and encouraging, expectations high. They take time to listen, and what a gift this is to my son. Occupational Therapists make his hands fatigued with work to strengthen them for another day so he has confidence in motor functions spared. The compassion that is shown him by his nurses and aids, all of whom he depends on for assistance encompasses all that is good about people. I know he is grateful because he tells me. As a friend of mine told me recently, "We can do hard things." He is right, and we will. Ultimately, I am reminded of the simplicity of the Savior's response to a question posed to him in Matthew 22:36-40, when he was asked "Master, what is the great commandment of the law? Of course the first is to love God, and the second to love your neighbor as yourself. I am witnessing charity from others "loving their neighbor---my son--up close and personal and it is breathing life into him. It is giving him hope.
