TheBanyanTree: Household Accidents

[Monique Young]

They sound so harmless. You slip, you fall, you get back up again. A twinge,
a pang, perhaps a sprain, but at home alone or with our families is where
we're safe from the most egregious injuries, the most damning assaults, the
incidents that happen out in the real world on a daily basis that maim,
injure, and kill. 

                John Russell was at home on the morning of January 26th. He
had a household accident. He was taken to the hospital, in a coma. And there
he stayed. In a coma. The prognosis was grim, and then they determined that
he had, indeed, broken his brain stem. There was no hope for recovery.

                His family came from out of town, his children, his parents,
and his wife started contemplating the future without John. They'd been in
the midst of remodeling their home, and she worried about being able to sell
it in its present condition. She had no intention of staying in it.

                The doctors told her she needed to decide when to remove
life support. There was no brain activity. Can you imagine? Having to make
that decision with only the word of the doctor to go by? These doctors, they
don't know John, they don't know who he was, who he still was to his family.
Easy for them, she thought, to say there was no brain activity, but how did
they know? There had been signs of brain activity, several days after the
accident. His eyes had been open, and he'd flinched when the doctors worked
with him. This was both good and bad news at the time, for the longer it
went on like this the worse his chances. But now they said there was no
brain activity, and his brain stem was broken, and on February 7th John was
taken off the respirator.

                On February 8th John Russell passed away. A household
accident. 

                Today I'll go sit at his desk for a couple of hours, as I
have been on and off this week, filling in temporarily while his company
figures out what to do next. I'll tread lightly on his paperwork, I'll
disturb as little as possible, and I'll look at the pages with his notes
scribbled all over them and think of how he'll never do that again, and
never sit in that chair again. 

                Be careful out there, and in there also. It's a dangerous
world.