Todd and his Recovery 10-19-11

Todd was unconscious for days. Doctors and Nurses battled constantly to adjust machine settings and cutting edge drug doses. He went into cardiac arrest twice before surgery....and a total of FIVE times post op! The most they had to shock him back was four times, but they claimed they would have kept trying for an hour if necessary. After 4 days, they began to wean him off of the heart/lung machine, one half hour at a time. After 5 days, Todd began to slowly return to consciousness. Raising his eyebrows in response to a question, a little squeeze of the hand when requested, or a twitch of the foot were all that he could manage at first. The tubes down his throat made even grunting arduous. Lines going in and out of his veins dripped fluids and medications in at a constant rate. His surgeon had performed a quadruple bypass and installed an aortic and mitral valve in a man who was supposed to have been dead a month ago. His mother called me every day after spending hours by his bedside. His 17 year old daughter was reluctant to go into his room at first, not knowing what to say to a father in no condition to respond. An older relative told her to "just talk to him as though he can hear every word." She did. Todd later confessed to me that just prior to her doing so, he distinctly remembers having decided to "give up." He was beyond tired, and beaten down from the constant pain and struggle. He decided to finally "let go." As she spoke, she saw no reaction, but he later reflected that it was at this juncture he decided to fight on a little longer as he remembered his two children. To be cont...