One day, by accident, a shiny mylar balloon floated above his head, allowing him to see his entire hospital room. He kept the dome-shaped balloon on the ceiling above his head, which served as a mirror and a way to see people who entered the room. The balloon was a catalyst for making his immobility more bearable.
The first person he remembers seeing was his wife, Angela. As he was brought out of the coma, he used sign language to communicate. His first words were “hot” and “ow.” He also wrote to her, working his way through stacks of paper. Without being able to sit up and see what he was doing, the scrawled script looked like a child’s, making the messages seem all the more desperate.
One sheet read “I want 2 live,” and on the other side, “is scary.”
With limited sensory input from the outside world, he felt trapped in his own body. The clock’s second hand, ticking away every moment spent staring at the ceiling, was painful to hear. To make the time pass by quicker, he went through flight calculations in his head and reviewed what he knew about biology and how it applied to his injuries.
He spent eight weeks at PeaceHealth, five of them in the intensive care unit and three on the orthopedic floor; 19 days at Vibra Speciality Hospital of Portland, a long-term acute care facility; and three weeks at ManorCare Health Services, a skilled nursing facility in Salmon Creek. He underwent 13 major surgeries and more body scans than he can count.