08/11/04 - Terry Brown

David Was Not A Winner Today...

Received a call this morning from Shock Trauma that David coded at about 7:00AM this morning. His heart stopped and he stopped breathing for nearly a minute. When I arrived at the hospital this morning a team of Cardiologists were in his hospital room. The results from all the studies came in this afternoon. David's heart is going as a result of his extensive abdominal injuries and he will now need a pacemaker. I don't know if David can withstand another surgery at this time with all of his medical issues and infections. His doctor also advised me that his body can reject the pacemaker or it can cause yet another infection and would have to be removed.

The 2:00 meeting did not happen today because of David's "new" heart complications. Instead, his team of doctor's, his nurse and the Social Worker called an emergency meeting for 1:00. I called my sister and my nephew drove her down so that Wanda could be with me today. The bottom line is this...a transplant will NEVER be an option for David because of his chronic infections and sepsis. They contacted Dr. Fishbein at Georgetown and the wait for someone without all of David's medical issues is 3 1/2 years!

They have medically done all they can for David at this time and strongly suggested that we make David a DNR. There are many levels of this and we decided that David would not go back on a ventilator and if he codes again they will only try and keep him alive through medications. No shock paddles and no chest compressions as that would be painful for him at this point. His doctor said that today could be David's last day or he could manage to surprise us all and live another few months. This is something that they all agreed could not be predicted.

David will unfortunately spend his life being transferred from Shock Trauma to Rehab until his life is over. I think I have known for a long time that David would never be well enough to undergo a transplant but when they finally put in into words, it just hits you like a ton of bricks.

I was in the room with David tonight and my sister when his doctor broke the news to him that they had medically done all they could for him...David just looked up at me and said..."I fought so hard for us, but I didn't win this time did I?" and I replied..."No, the odds were just not in your favor from the beginning." I held his hand and I told him that we would fight this thing together until the bitter end and he seemed to be at peace with that.

As you can guess, I'm pretty much emotionally spent. When we left the infamous TV lady turned David's TV back on...can you believe the only thing he was worried about today was where was his TV....unbelievable, yet so David. He was looking at the TV when we left...I'm not sure how much he understood with his mental state, but at least it's a distractor from everything else that is going on around him.

Terry