Today brought another chapter in Darryl’s book of recovery; he moved to rehab. Three weeks ago the registrar spoke to us about rehab and the fact that he could well go there while still in a coma so we have had time to get used to the idea, but you do feel a sense of anxiety moving from a hospital all the same.
The rehab is a specialist facility that deals with traumatic brain injury patients and has all the bells and whistles for rehabilitation. Darryl is in the most intensive needs unit and there is a huge team of specialists that will begin work with him and hopefully ease him back to consciousness.
It was one of those ‘twilight zone’ moments on the way out there in the ambulance. I asked Darryl if he knew where we were going and he gave a thumbs up, he also knew we were in an ambulance and he was able to communicate his level of comfort the whole way – while in a coma!!
We got him settled in there and put up all his cards and pictures around the place and tried to brief up the staff on him , his progress to date and what makes Darryl tick. There had been a pretty thorough handover from the hospital team so the transition wasn’t as scary as it might have been, albeit there is nothing about this journey that doesn’t scare me.
The rehab team will spend the next week assessing Darryl and getting to know what he can and can’t cope with and then develop a plan. What that plan looks like, how long it will be and what will ultimately be the result is anyone’s guess. Time will tell and we must all remember that this is a marathon not a sprint.
The next few weeks will hopefully see the positive progress continue to grow and the distance between our parallel universes close. There are times when I have to remind myself of the life that we left behind on this day four weeks ago, but I am also aware that life is about the journey not the destination and we are all defined by the way in which we deal with the twists and turns the journey inevitably brings.
There is no easy way for Darryl, there are just degrees of difficult. In so many ways I wish I could unravel this mess for him and put the pieces of this jigsaw back where they should be. But life doesn’t work like that. It goes only one way and that is forward. The ‘what ifs’ only serve as reminders of choices not made and are salt in the wound for those who dwell on them. Darryl is not that guy. He has, and always will do what needs to be, to move forward. Looking back to him is simply a way to measure how far he has come, not what he could have done differently.
So as time moves forward so will he, safe in the knowledge that it is in tomorrow that the endless stream of possiblities really lay, regardless of the path that got him to today.
Keep strong Darryl
Dad
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