On the afternoon of ANZAC day, Saturday the 25th of April 2009, our much loved son, brother, grandson and friend of so many, Darryl Sabin, entered a monumental battle of his own, the fight for his life.
Darryl who will be 19 in September, was playing his second game of rugby since suffering a serious head injury in March 2007 while playing for Eastern under 18’s. On this latest occasion he was playing for Te Hapua, at Te Hapua and true to form he was the team captain and leading from the front.
As we understand it, Darryl took the ball up from a tap and go and was hit in a tackle described to us as “high” and he was knocked backwards striking his head on the ground which rendered him unconscious. Darryl regained consciousness and staggered off the field where we were told he fell into a coma, began fitting and vomiting, much like I remember from the 2007 incident.
An ambulance was called but at around 4.20 pm that afternoon one of the Northland Rescue helicopters arrived at the ground to transport him by air to hospital. I rang the ambulance comms center and told them of his history and stressed that his previous injury involved a bleed on the brain and I would expect the same with this one and they worked quickly to get him to Whangarei where he was quickly scanned while the helicopter kept its rotors turning. They identified a significant bleed to the right side of his brain and I was informed by phone by the doctor at A&E that he was being flown to Auckland for emergency brain surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain.
Brook, Darryl’s brother happened to be in Whangarei and rushed to the hospital and went with Darryl in the helicopter to Auckland, keeping Catherine and I updated as we drove south from Mangonui.
We arrived at Auckland hospital at about 9.30 pm on Saturday night and met with Brook. We then just had to wait as Darryl was still in surgery. Nothing can describe the immense feeling of worry that consumed the three of us as we sat there waiting to hear from the surgery team.
Almost two hours later a doctor emerged to tell us of the severity of the injury and that they had just about lost him during the operation and that he was a “very very sick boy”. My fingers and hands are shaking just typing this, so raw is the gut wrenching pain that still exists at receiving the news. Worse was yet to come.
We were taken through to a meeting room in the Critical Care unit, where we sat awaiting an update from the specialists on the ward. It was another hour or so later that we met Dr. Les Galler a specialist of more than 20 years experience in this field, who delivered the most devastating news of my life. He said that “Darryl has suffered a catastrophic head injury, which is more than likely going to kill him”. For Catherine, Brook and I, that moment is and will always be, chiseled into our minds.
He went on to explain the degree of the injury and that to prevent brain death they had performed a craniotomy which involved removing a large part of the skull over the site of the bleeding to firstly remove the blood clotting and then allow the brain room to swell. He explained what happens in these situations and all the news he gave us was equally devastating. Basically we were told to prepare for the worst. Our world was crashing down around us and we all just wanted to see him and be beside him.
An hour or so later we were allowed in to see him and what greeted us was a terrible site. As you can well image he had all the manner tubes pocking out from him and he was hooked up to every piece of equipment I think they could fit into his patient space. We couldn’t do anything but stand there is shock with tears rolling down our cheeks.
Over the next two sleepless days and nights they worked hard to stabilise Darryl as best they could, treating a chest infection that had started, trying to cool him down and minimise the swelling and devastation to his brain. Over this time Darryl was consistently demonstrating very alarming characteristics of what they said was a very severe brain injury. The news just kept getting worse and while you cling on to hope by a thread, the harsh realities of his struggle to hold on to life are reinforced hourly.
Other family arrived over the first couple of days and I was reminded of the heartache Brook was experiencing as a brother, when in the early hours of Sunday morning, my brother Len arrived to provide support. Len was a rock for us all in those first few hours and over the days that passed and it heightened my sense of what Brook stood to lose with his only brother lying helpless in critical care fighting for his life.
His mother Megan and her family along with mine and Catherine’s family all rallied around and I searched for answers and signs of anything that may show hope. Then half way through day three, having spoken to Dr. Galler in the morning and had my worst fears reinforced (again), Dr. Galler approached me and said something else I will never forget; “Darryl has done a few things that have surprised us. There are some signs there that make us feel we need to give him the benefit of the doubt”.
Having hours before been told by the same doctor that basically the end was approaching, this was of course a major relief, albeit it you may find it hard to comprehend it is possible to feel relief in the midst of the rollercoaster through a nightmare. I was told by Dr. Galler that Darryl had started to respond to some basic voice commands such as squeezing a hand, wiggling his toes and had started to ‘localise’ to pain, which is doctors speak for reaching for where the source of induced pain is. To me this seemed a huge leap given he could obviously hear the command, process it and then comply with it.
In any event, Dr. Galler said they would perform a tracheostomy which involves putting a breathing tube into his throat which was described as a turning point in terms of now focusing on a stronger possibility of survival. As I have described to a few people over the last week, you don’t really hear what you’d call ‘good news’ in critical care, you just hear news that can be anything from bad to incredibly bad. In this sense something that would have otherwise seemed devastating news (Hey your son can wiggle his toes if I yell at him) becomes really good news even though a few days earlier before the injury it would have seemed a disaster.
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