Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead

by Brian Boyle

  My dad and I were always involved in sports—hitting baseballs at the local batting cage, playing tennis, one-on-one basketball, going to the golf driving range, running, riding bikes, swimming, playing catch with the football. Whatever kind of activity we did, there was always a hint of competition. He was really fit from all the heavy lifting that he did at work. I always wanted to have his big arms and shoulders.

  My parents didn’t idly sit at home. We took day trips to the capital and Baltimore for visits to the museums, zoos, and art galleries. Music was always a big deal in our house too, and my dad’s record collection was impressive. I would spend hours sitting in front of the turntable and cassette player listening to Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Foghat, Van Halen, Mötley Crüe, INXS, Rod Stewart, Jimi Hendrix, Neil Young, The Cure, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Marley and the Wailers, The Beastie Boys, The Gap Band, and Prince.

  When I was in second grade, we moved to the small town of Welcome in the rural part of southern Maryland because my parents liked its tranquility. Welcome’s claim to fame is that it’s part of Charles County. In April of 1865, John Wilkes Booth escaped through the county after shooting president Abraham Lincoln. He was on his way to Virginia. With its Civil War heritage and picturesque beauty, Welcome is an ideal place to raise a family. It’s only two minutes from the Potomac River. Our home sits on a big hill in the woods.

  Meanwhile, my father’s family concrete business was doing well. He worked on projects at the U.S. Capitol, Redskins Stadium, the MCI Center, Whitehurst Freeway, Union Station, and the FDR Memorial. Because of his job, my mom and I rarely got to see him except on weekends. So he made a big decision: he left the family business and joined forces with another concrete firm close to home. New housing developments were booming in southern Maryland.

  My mom also transferred from the Air Force to work for the Navy at the Patuxent River Naval Base in the next county.

  Then, the first big tragedy struck our family. It was 1992. We were spending the weekend in Ocean City. Dad looked thin, unhealthy. When he was wearing a bathing suit, his ribs were prominently showing; he had lost a lot of weight. He was always muscular, so this seemed odd. He was thirty-three years old. A week later, he went to the family doctor, thinking he had ruptured a hernia on a job site. His physician ran some tests, then recommended he see a urologist. Two days later, the urologist told him that there was a strong possibility he had a cancerous tumor in his right testicle and that he would need immediate surgery to remove it. Back then, whenever the word cancer was used, it meant an automatic death sentence. Only the year before, his father had died from prostate cancer. Now I was going to lose my dad, too.

  I avoided my dad when he came home from the hospital, because I thought he was going to leave me forever. I was just six years old. On the fourth day, he got out of bed for the first time. He could barely stand up, let alone walk, but he somehow made it to the bottom of the stairs, hunched over and holding onto the banister for support with both hands. He was in agony, looking like a crippled ninety-year-old man. He saw me at the top of the stairs looking down. He could see that I was frightened. As our eyes met, he let go of the railing, stood straight up, and smiled, letting me know that I could count on him.

  Now it’s my turn, in this bed, in Room 19, to show that same kind of strength. I have to let my parents know that I’m not going anywhere, either.

  CHAPTER 8

  THE SMILE

  When my parents come back for the afternoon visiting hour, I need to let them know how much I love them. With enough concentration and effort, I can blink, but that’s not enough. I have to try something else. Then it dawns on me: I can smile. That would be perfect! But how am I going to get my facial muscles to cooperate?

  I try to find awareness in my lips but they are numb. I keep searching for sensation, a slight twitch or quiver. Fifteen minutes go by, and I’m sweating terribly, my body seems on fire. Finally, I’m able to purse my lips. I’m growing weak from the strain, but I can’t give up.

  I press my lips together to get the nerves in my lips and mouth active again. I feel blood rushing through the area. I repeat the puckering, but I’m starting to feel nauseous. Yet I won’t stop until I have created a smile.

  I focus attention on the tiny muscles behind my lips, but there’s no motion from the start. This is going to be an even bigger challenge. I always took the ability to smile for granted. I go back to the kissing motion, trying to loosen the muscles.

  I have to take a break. I stare at the ceiling, trying to gather inspiration, anything that will help me succeed. I think about the reaction my parents will have when they see me smiling. I return to the kissing motion, and out of nowhere I feel like I’m zapped with a thousand volts of electricity. My body goes into a violent seizure. The machines in my room begin to blare. Several nurses hurry to my side.

  After several minutes, my body is finally released from this horror spell. The room is spinning. Foam spews from my mouth. I can barely see. The machines’ alarms have quieted and returned to their normal beeping and pinging. I hear the nurses ask one another what could have caused my seizure. One suggests that they need to check with a neurologist to see if I have brain damage. As she runs out of the room to find him, the other four nurses stay with me. One nervously gives me an injection. She holds the needle very cautiously, hoping that I don’t start shaking again because that could pose a risk of breaking the needle off in a vein.

  I lie there on my side, breathing hard. The nurses are gently rubbing my forehead and softly dabbing off the sweat with a small damp towel. My dad’s voice from earlier replays constantly in my head: “I know how tired you are, but please don’t give up.”

  I stubbornly seek out sensations in my lips once more, trying to strengthen them to create a simple smile. Even if I have another seizure, I will keep trying. I push my lips together and release them. I do this several times before I’m zapped again, my body flailing about. There’s a sudden sharp pain in my groin, and the arm restraints loosen from all the wild motion. The nurses struggle to keep me flat on the bed. My body continues to convulse and the room starts to turn dark, when I see the nurse come back with the neurologist and an ICU doctor. They join the nurses in helping to calm me down, while they analyze the situation. When I go limp, the nurses rush to strap my arms down to the bed, this time binding them more tightly.

  One of the nurses notices that the sheets by my legs are wet. She pulls off the cover to see what happened. “Oh dear,” I hear her say, “Brian just wet the bed. There’s urine everywhere. His thrashing must have dislodged the catheter when he was having his seizure. Aw, poor guy, that must have really hurt!”

  As the nurses roll me about on the bed, switching the sheets and giving me a new gown, I listen to the neurologist tell the ICU doctor that he’s worried about possible brain damage. He thinks I need an MRI, X-rays, and brain scans so they can figure out what’s wrong.

  The nurses quickly gather all my machines and IVs and rapidly wheel me out of the room. They push me down the hallways at a much faster pace than usual. I watch the ceiling lights flicker past. I’m wheeled into the radiology department, where I first encountered the perfumed woman.

  While waiting to be shoved into the big white machine, I try to move my lips. They are sore. I concentrate on lip puckering. It’s so difficult. I flex my cheeks a little bit, but there is no movement. I also try to move my eyes around, just to get everything working together. The eyelids flutter at first, and then surprisingly they break free from their frozenstraight-ahead position.

  I keep moving my lips back and forth, flexing, squeezing, relaxing, until I sense another seizure about to commence. My body is thrown into a bucking spasm and the nurses rush over to my bed. A flurry of hands struggles to calm my body down. This seizure only lasts about thirty seconds. I watch the nurses wipe sweat from their faces.

  I’m back in Room 19. A nurse injects me with some kind of medication in a new IV that she has just inserted into my left forearm. A
second nurse takes blood from my other forearm. I feel like a human dartboard.

  I move my tongue around the inside of my mouth. For the first time, I feel some sensation in my jaw and cheeks. Determined, I try twitching, but nothing. Only after the tenth time am I finally able to generate a response, and that’s all it takes to fuel the next attempt, and then the next. I keep at it. One, two, three, four, five ... and then I have to rest. The muscles in my face are rapidly tiring from all the activity. My face feels like it has a cramp.

  I rest for a little while, and then my body tenses up. Please not again, not now! My body explodes in a wild fit of tossing, but this time I try to stay rigid. My teeth grind and foam churns in my mouth. Stay focused, I keep thinking. Just let it pass and run its course. The seizure soon subsides and I’m finally released from its powerful hold. I’m drenched in a cold sweat.

  This episode drains my last remaining energy. All I can do now is take a long breather, conserving strength for my parents’ arrival.

  I close my eyes and begin to daydream. I’m a little boy again, out in the front yard in the driveway on a warm spring day. My dad just got home from work, and I run out to see him and give him a hug. I’m happy to see him. After he goes in the house to say hello to my mom, he comes back outside and we throw the football. “Go long, Brian. Go all the way out past the tree in the middle of the driveway,” he yells as I toss the ball to him and start to run down the driveway. I get to the end of the driveway, and as soon as I turn around, the ball lands right between my hands.

  “Good throw, Dad, but watch this!” I throw it back to him and watch him standing there, as he is getting ready to catch it. We throw it back and forth, as the sun starts going down behind the trees, casting shadows along the driveway.

  I open my eyes, reflecting on the memory. But something about my face feels different. There’s tightness around my cheeks and mouth. Could I be doing what I think I’m doing? I remember that feeling! I haven’t felt this in ages. I’m finally smiling! I can’t believe it! Tears fill my eyes with a sense of accomplishment.

  I hear footsteps outside my room. My mom and dad enter, both of them wearing a sad look of despair. My dad sees me first. The stress in his face immediately disappears when he notices me smiling. “JoAnne, look! Look!” he shouts. “He’s smiling—can you believe it?”

  Several nurses rush in, wondering what’s wrong. I watch their jaws drop.

  Mom and Dad walk toward me, not saying anything. They’re gleaming with happiness. Both stare in amazement. I continue looking up at them, smiling.

  The smile is everything I hoped it would be. It is so much more than a common facial gesture that I had once taken for granted; it is a defining gesture, a pure expression of love that has brought my parents and me out of the depths of the deepest darkness.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE KISS

  I’m just waking up when I hear a woman’s voice that apparently exists outside of any dream. “Brian, can you hear me?” I’d like to continue sleeping, but I feel someone tapping my chest as if knocking on a door. I open my eyes to find out what is happening.

  Temporarily blinded by the room’s brightness, I see a small woman in a white lab coat standing on the left-hand side of my bed.

  “There you are, Brian, good morning. My name is Dr. Kulkarni, and I work in physical medicine and rehabilitation. I heard from your nurses that you were able to smile yesterday. They even said that you could blink. Is this true?”

  Without thinking, I shut my eyes, because I want to go back to sleep. But I then hurry to reopen my eyes. Why can’t I just keep them shut? At least the chest tapping has stopped.

  “That’s wonderful—that blink. I’m here because I want you to perform some very minimal tasks. We’re going to start your physical therapy, and this is an evaluation to see what you’re capable of.”

  One of my nurses comes in the room and walks near my bed as Dr. Kulkarni continues talking. The nurse takes a tubelike device and starts fiddling around with my breathing tube, which causes me to cough up the fluid blockage collected in my fragile lungs.

  Dr. Kulkarni watches patiently as the nurse finishes cleaning out the gooey lung buildup. The nurse then inserts a new IV into my arm, and gives me “breakfast” through the drip feed tube that travels down my nose into my stomach.

  “Can you smile for me?” Dr. Kulkarni asks in a curious tone. I try but am too weak to manage anything substantial. But she at least notices a hint of something. “Good job,” she says after the muscles in my face go slack again.

  She walks over to my right side, holding a clipboard in her hand. She places her left hand under my right hand and raises it about an inch off the bed.

  “Can you squeeze my hand?” she asks. I struggle to move my fingertips and wrap them around her hand. “Very good,” she says as she walks over to the left-hand side of my bed. She picks up my left hand and gives the same request. There’s no sensation in my left hand; it’s completely numb. “That’s okay, don’t worry. We were thinking this would happen, since your left shoulder suffered a lot of nerve damage from your accident, but you’ll be able to move it in a few years, and there’s a really good chance that you’ll have full recovery, too.”

  A few years? What? She can’t be right, can she?

  She’s busy writing stuff down on her clipboard, and then walks to the end of my bed. “Can you wiggle your toes?”

  I try to focus my attention where my toes are attached, and once the mind-body connection is made, my toes move slightly.

  “Now how about your feet? I’m going to put pressure on the front of your feet and I want you to push them forward. Okay?”

  I stop wiggling my toes and try to push my feet forward. My ankles make a slight crackling noise and then a pop, and they move forward about half an inch. I try again and my feet move forward about an inch. “That’s great,” she says.

  She then walks over to the left side of the room. I’m not sure what she is doing, though I hear her fiddling with some type of medical instruments. I try to move my head so I can see better, but my head can only rotate about an inch to the left, which is still an accomplishment, because yesterday I couldn’t move my head at all.

  She walks back to my bed, pushing a little trolley with a machine that has a system of wires. A handheld remote-control gizmo lies next to it. “This is the last thing I’m going to do today,” she explains in a sympathetic voice. “This test is called an electromyogram and it will let me and your physical therapists know how your nerves and muscles are functioning and responding.” She pauses, and then picks up the remote-control device from the cart. “So what I’m going to do is send an electrical impulse to certain areas of your body to see if we can get a response. You may feel a slight amount of pressure that will be uncomfortable, but it will be over soon.” I like everything she just said, except the part about it being uncomfortable.

  She applies a jellylike substance to various areas of my arms, legs, and shoulders. She brings the handheld device closer to my right arm. She presses a button and my arm jerks from the electrical shock. Whoa, please don’t do that again, I silently beg. She zaps my right leg and it automatically lifts off the bed several inches. This feels like torture. After several minutes of being zapped, I stare blankly at the ceiling.

  “See, now that wasn’t so bad, was it?” she says to me in a cheerful voice. Is she serious?

  She walks over to one of my nurses, whom I don’t recognize, standing just outside my room and filling out a stack of paperwork. I can just barely hear their conversation because of the distance. Dr. Kulkarni asks her if I am able to speak. The nurse briefly looks my way. “Well, we really don’t know yet,” I hear her say. “There was evidence of a massive concussion from the crash. The fact that he’s still living is a miracle. He has been through so much already for the past month and a half. He had an incident a few weeks ago where his tracheotomy tube clogged up and he couldn’t breathe for several minutes. The lack of oxygen for his
brain may have had a catastrophic effect. If he is able to speak one day, then that will be fantastic, but his overall mental capacity, if and when he comes out of the coma, is unknown.”

  Huh? This latest overheard news alert sends me furiously spiraling into panic mode. My heart is racing while trying to keep pace with my out-of-control thoughts. I have been here for a month and a half? How is that possible? I only remember waking up just a few days ago. Why did my parents tell me that I only had a few broken bones and that I would be out of here in a few days? Are they just trying to sugarcoat the fact that I might have suffered brain damage? This just doesn’t seem possible, because I’m thinking right now; I seem coherent. Don’t these people know I’m blinking on command and trying to smile and wiggle my toes? Isn’t that good enough evidence that my brain is working like it’s always worked, except that I can’t speak? And if I can’t get words to come out of my mouth, I will just have to learn sign language once I get more feeling back in my fingers. Whatever got me in this mess—and I still don’t know what accident everyone is referring to—I will not have it defeat me. Still, six weeks of my life have been excised like a giant tumor. Is this what amnesia is like? Or maybe I do have brain damage. I’m more scared than I have ever been in my life.

  After she gathers up her instruments and clipboard, Dr. Kulkarni leaves the room. A nurse walks in right afterward. I move my eyes in her direction to see if I recognize her and I do. She’s smiling and is happy to see me. “Hi Brian, I’m Nurse Kimberly. Do you remember me?” I blink once in response. She looks over the gauges on my monitors and machines. She attaches a new bag of fluid for my IV, removes blood for testing, cleans out the buildup in my breathing tube, checks my catheter, wraps air-filled compression braces around my legs, and turns on the television. I tilt my head so I can see the screen. There’s a news program about the Iraq War on, and the screen is full of wounded soldiers and civilian victims from a mass suicide bombing.