It’s been a tough week. Excellent in so many ways but heartbreaking in others. I guess this is something I and we as a family have got used to over the past few months, but it doesn’t make it any easier to be honest. In fact the closer we get to ‘normality’ (if in fact there is such a thing anymore) the harder much of this seems to be to understand and deal with.
Darryl has been making great progress with his mobility and now has little use for the wheelchair as we are walking everywhere. Of course when I say walking ,I mean I am standing in front of him helping to guide him in what could be described as a rehab waltz akin to a poor performance on dancing with the stars. He has also been doing a bit of work with a walking stick to try and give him a bit better balance, although over the weekend we had some good success with using the lancewood staff he made me (also known by Darryl as the stick of misery).
Darryl still has trouble with his right leg and foot and a lot of effort is needed to try and coordinate the use of this leg as opposed to the left, in the main because it a little stiffer and has less range of active movement . This is also the case with his right arm which is still largely limited in function and something I am working really hard to change. We exercise this arm several times a day and the gains are coming, but slowly. He can now move it around quite well in most ranges but his shoulder is very very week, which effectively limits all the other movement of the arm. But when you look at where we are now compared to two weeks ago, let alone two months ago, it is clear he is right on track.
This was all confirmed at the beginning of the week when we had an appointment with the surgeon who saved Darryl’s life, Mr. Andrew Law. The appointment was to set in place a plan for his cranioplasty (repairing the large piece of skull that has been removed from the right side of his head). I was really nervous about this meeting, not so much because of what it was for, but because it is very humbling to meet a person who has saved your child’s life.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the almost instantaneous recoil into the horror of the days in which Darryl hung tenuously to life back in critical care. Mr. Law explained how near death Darryl was and how he fought for him, from the beginning. He said Darryl was one of those special cases where he wanted to give him every chance despite the odds that he faced. He discussed the third day and how he basically worked Darryl up enough until he finally got a reaction out of him – the now famous ’thumbs up’. It was on the morning of this third day that we were being prepared to face the most abhorrent of all decisions, one of whether to accept the death of your child or not. That response from Darryl, that Mr. Law worked so hard to get, that he fought for, was the turning point and a day I will never forget . Hearing him talk about it brought that day back to me like it had never left. I felt the room starting to turn and my stomach tighten the same as it had months ago. I felt the unexplainable fear of life slipping though my hands like sand and as fast as you try to gather it back up it seems to fall back through your fingers. It was all I could do to not fall off my chair. I looked across at Darryl as if to remind myself that it was all a dream, well nightmare to be more accurate, that I had woken from. And in many ways that is the case. In any event Darryl was sitting in a chair beside me, the same Darryl I knew on the 24th of April, albeit a little less functional (at the moment).
Mr. Law spent almost an hour talking with Darryl and I and explained a number of things about his injury and recovery, which in the main was very positive. So it should be, he is a walking talking miracle and testimony to the power of the human spirit as far as I am concerned. Unfortunately however Darryl picked up on one comment from Mr. Law about the possibility of a less than 100 percent recovery of his right arm due to the nature of the injury. From the seeds of this conversation grew a number of days of pure heartache for Darryl.
On the way back from the appointment to the rehab Darryl started to make comments that he wouldn’t make a 100 percent recovery, which I tried to explain to him was not the case it all, but he must accept that after any injury things are changed, normal is no longer what it used to be, but that wouldn’t mean that he wouldn’t get back to 100 percent, in his ‘new’ self.
Unfortunately my pep talk only headed off the melt down for an hour or so and later back at the rehab he was sobbing his heart out. This was the first of three or four episodes of total dispair and grieving from Darryl over the next few days. On one occasion it was on the way back from the gym and in frustration at his effort to coordinate his walking he looked me in the eye and started crying, “saying I’m so sorry Dad, all this for a game of rugby” at which time he dissolved in to heart wrenching tears. Well we both did actually.
It was an emotionally draining few days and I was doing all I could to hold things together myself, let alone ensuring Darryl’s mood and spirit were kept in check as best as possible. Part of me was really angry that in December 2007 when Darryl sat in a clinical appointment with neurologist who amongst so many other things said “there’s nothing on this scan to say that if you played again, that this would happen again”. And that is all that Darryl ‘heard’ – the good stuff as he saw it, justification for playing again. While on this occasion amongst so much other good stuff, all he could hear was something that was concerning, potentially negative. The irony was like a punch in the stomach, but something I had to swallow and ignore, for Darryl’s sake.
So in a week when Darryl has physically made some fantastic progress, psychologically he has been to rehab hell and back. And for each tear that fell from his cheeks my sense of sadness and stomach turning sorrow for his journey through the realisation of his life-changing injury, has grown. For this reason I have to keep telling myself that as improved as Darryl is on what he was and what was expected, nothing less than 100 percent will do.
Darryl, no matter what, you must believe that your destiny is in your own hands. Never let anyone put limits on what you might do, or be able to achieve. I believe in you and you must also. You are here because of who you are and because even in the depths of a life-threatening coma, you weren’t prepared to let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t be here. You proved them wrong then and you will do it again.
Your goal will determine your outcome Darryl, not anyone else’s perception of its achievability. And my promise to you is that I will not give up on believing in your ability to achieve the goals you set.
I love you Darryl and I am proud to be your father.
Dad.
Recent Comments