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| Next page - Hospital 2 |
| Josh's Story------- |
| My Son's Overdose - The Hospital
I've been sitting here for days, staring at this computer-- unable to complete this last part of Josh’s story. I'm hesitant to even begin, but I have to. The memories are just so difficult. To write it down will be to re-live it, (which is why I've been putting it off), but I have come this far and want to finish what I have started. I have to say these things out loud, or I am going to crumble from the weight of it. Bear with me, and forgive me if it's not perfect... this will not be easy to do. We got to the second hospital and they whisked Josh away to an intensive care room, leaving us wait in the ICU waiting room until they had him stable. After what felt like an eternity, they finally they let us in. I was so afraid. There are no words to describe that kind of fear. It feels like the world is whooshing past you, like you are falling very fast, yet there is a solid floor beneath you. You want to reach out and grab something, but someone has removed all the handles, all the ropes….you clutch thin air. Josh lay in the bed unconscious, with a ventilator breathing for him. Tubes and wires coming from everywhere. Nurses came in and out of the room and I searched their eyes, looking for some kind of hope, but they barely looked at me. Perhaps they think it best to keep an emotional distance, I don’t know. All I know is at that moment I needed to hear something, anything. I wanted to know what was wrong with my son! His girlfriend and I stood at the bedside talking to him, and I remember begging him to try. I didn’t even know if he could hear me. I wanted to call him back from whatever depths he’d fallen into. Come back to Mommy Josh, I’m here, come back baby. But there was Nothing..no sign at all. I saw that he was trembling off and on, his whole body was shaking,, and I asked the nurse why? She said that the trembing was because small seizures were still racking his brain. She matter-of-factly explained that pressure was probably building on his brain, and this would cause him to tremble. She might as well have been explaining the workings of a clock radio or something, she was just so matter-of-fact. She's telling me this and all I could think of was: that means it's not over! He is still being hurt. Pressure on his brain..my god, do something!!! How can you just stand there? He is still suffering harm. Stop it here, don’t let it get any worse! The nurses said they could not stop it, that because he had gone without oxygen his brain was probably damaged and it was going to swell..period. They asked us to step out of the room while they put a line into the artery of his leg. They said this was necessary because he needed dialysis. Because his kidneys had failed, the toxins in his blood were now at a dangerous level. Hating to leave him for even a second, we went back to the waiting room, trying so hard to offer hope to one another. Everyone was absolutely terrified. After waiting half an hour, no one had come back to get us. Unable to stand it any longer, Josh’s girlfriend and I went back to his room. He was all alone. I walked up to the edge of the bed to touch him, and realized he was trembling all over. Suddenly I saw that there was blood pouring out the side of his mouth, and out of his nose. It was all over the pillow…oh my god, the memory of this haunts me like a nightmare. I went screaming into the hall for a nurse, and they threw us out of the room again. We had no idea what was happening to him, or where the blood was coming from. After another eternity, they came out and talked to us. They said he'd had a major seizure, and that it caused him to bite his tongue, very, very badly. The told me It could not be stitched because of his breathing tube. To worsen the nightmare, they said because his liver had failed (your liver is what makes makes your blood able to clot), that it was going to continue to bleed. More than anything, THIS is the vision I cannot escape. Blood continued to run from my son’s mouth for the next 6 days, or it would pool up and suddenly come pouring out of his nose. All I could do was stand at his bedside and wiping it away, day after day. I filled wastebaskets with tissues, over and over... oh my god, can’t they make it stop? |
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| If you have a teen, and suspect they may be using or experimenting with drugs, please let them read this. Show them what a drug overdose is really like. Get rid of those romantic visions teens have of simply "falling asleep". It is a horrible, violent, undignified way to die that devastates the entire family. Too many kids have no fear, believing overdoses only happen to "other people", thinking it will never happen to them. |