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

by Brian Boyle

  I hear the water running in the sink and immediately start obsessing about getting a drink, just one lousy sip. It’s incredible how parched my throat feels.

  I glance up at the clock. It is 10:43. I watch the second hand go around and around, every sixty seconds marking a different drink in my imagination. For the first minute, it’s a tall glass of ice-cold water. The next minute, it’s one of those plastic two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew that I used to consume in one long continuous gulp. And wouldn’t it be great if I could swim in a pool of lemon-lime Gatorade and take a drink every time I put my head below the surface? Then it’s onto ice-cold milk—so cold that it’s right at the threshold of freezing. Of course, I can’t leave out fruit juices—apple, orange, cranberry, pineapple. I’m so desperate for liquid salvation that even a sip from a puddle of dirty water would be a treat. Thinking about all the refreshing possibilities causes me to drool. Kimberly wipes my mouth off with a small towel.

  Kimberly walks over and turns the volume of the television up. She begins to giggle. I look up at the television to see what she thinks is so funny. It’s a talk show and there is a blonde woman walking out on stage and waving to the audience. I squint to see if I have seen this show before and then realize that it’s Ellen DeGeneres. I’ve always been a big fan of Ellen’s talk show and her sitcoms. She starts dancing on stage. Her positive energy pumps up the audience. Watching Ellen, I’ve stopped thinking about being so thirsty.

  Engrossed with Ellen, I almost don’t see my parents enter the room. They seem more relieved and less sad. My dad is carrying a small blue paper bag, and my mom is actually walking without a nurse holding her arm. She is clenching a tissue, but she is not crying. My dad asks me to blink and smile. I do both right away. He puts his fingers under my right hand and tells me to squeeze and I do. He then tells me to shake his hand, and I softly move his hand a few inches up and down.

  He pulls the chair with the aqua cushion close to my bed and sits down. My mom stands on the right side of the bed. My dad says that he brought some of my favorite CDs, including the Omaha, Nebraska, rock band 311, along with a small foam globe. He says that by squeezing it several times a day, it will help reactivate the nerves and muscles in my hands that have been placed on standby. He gives the ball to my mom who places it in my right hand. I squeeze it a few times, which pleases them.

  Kimberly walks in the room and greets my parents, then rechecks the various machines and monitors. When she’s done, she leaves. The Boyle family watches Ellen together. A little bit later, Kimberly comes back into my room. Following right behind her is another nurse who is pushing a stretcherlike table. It’s Victoria who gave me the sponge bath. My dad helps the two nurses position the contraption next to my bed.

  The next thing I know, I am lifted onto this table. A soft dark red cushion covers it. Kimberly explains, “Brian, the table you’re laying on now is actually a chair and what we are going to do is tilt you up so your body gets used to sitting upright again. You’ve been on your back for quite a long time, so now we are going to gradually transition you to being upright because it is going to take some getting used to.”

  Both nurses strap a safety restraint belt around my waist, tie my arms and legs down to both sides of the table, and gradually bring me forward. Pressure immediately builds in my lower back. My butt feels like it’s sitting on razors. The pain is intense. How long am I going to have to sit like this? I rapidly blink to get their attention, but they don’t understand what I’m trying to say.

  All of a sudden, my body spasms from the excruciating pain. The seizure arrives with a frightening fury, throwing my limbs out of control. My mom screams in shock and darts out of the room while my dad looks on in horror. My mouth is spewing red foam and saliva. Right before I vomit, the room goes all black as if someone has flicked a switch and mercifully cast me into darkness.

  I’m still stuck in an inclined position in this chair. The nausea hasn’t gone away. The room is spinning and I instantly throw up; disgusting vomit covers my hospital gown and bare arms and legs. The aggressive reflex from throwing up forces out the feeding tube that goes from my nose to my stomach. A nurse rushes into my room and cleans up the mess, changes my gown, and then leaves. Less than a minute later, she returns with a doctor who says that I now need another operation to replace the feeding tube. Why did I have to wake up and vomit?

  Morning. The old feeding tube is curled inside a plastic bag waiting to be picked up. Long, black, and thin, it reminds me of a snake being threaded deep inside my gut.

  My parents visit at eleven o’clock and we watch Ellen. When their visiting session ends, I nod and smile. I even wave goodbye with my right arm that I’m now able to raise about a foot and a half off of the bed. Right after they depart, I’m wheeled to the operating room to insert a new feeding tube. My typical entourage of ventilator, IVs, and various machines accompanies me through the hospital corridors.

  A kindhearted nurse named Debbie tells me that the operation is going to be extremely uncomfortable. Her words elevate my stress. She says that the doctor will be inserting the tube into my nose and threading it all the way through my throat until it reaches my stomach. Special care must be taken to ensure that it does not pass through the windpipe and down into my lungs. The tube’s insertion must be done without anesthesia, so I need to be awake the entire time. Seeking to bolster my spirits, Debbie says that it would be great if I could blow my mom a kiss when I return from surgery.

  I’m wheeled into a cold room where I’m positioned directly underneath a large X-ray machine. The doctor arrives and says he’s ready to begin. I’m not. I dread this procedure, so I shut my eyes as if I have the power to block out the imminent unpleasantness. Debbie holds my hand.

  I feel the tube entering my nose, creating a faint tickling sensation followed by intense pressure in my nasal cavity. The tube winds down my throat, causing a fierce gagging reflex. “I have to back up and retrace my steps, because the tube is going down the wrong path,” says the doctor regretfully. He pulls it out about four inches and then starts down a different path. He stops again, pauses for a few seconds, pulls the tube back out about two inches, and pushes it back in forcefully creating a loud popping noise. This is pure agony. I stare at my tormenter, begging for his mercy. He answers my nonvocal pleading and tapes the end of the tube to my nose.

  I continue to lie there on the operating table, drenched in a clammy sweat. Debbie strokes my forehead. She offers congratulations for being brave, but courage is the last emotion I feel right now. I’m totally spent, my vision reduced to a foggy haze.

  When I return to my room, the reward for enduring that awful encounter with the feeding tube is another upright session in what I now call the “angry chair.” I hate this chair. I almost wish that I were back in the operating room.

  After what feels like ten minutes, my lower body starts turning numb. After thirty minutes, I’m drooling. After an hour, I’m sweating rapidly and feel an intense discomfort in my lungs. I hear the ventilator working harder than usual to pump air into my weak lungs.

  I watch ICU visitors walk by my room. If they happen to look inside, they will see a motionless, drooling person strapped to a chair. Poor damaged soul, they must think, walking away in revulsion.

  Debbie enters my line of sight from the left side of the room; she must have been sitting behind me the whole time. I look at her with my eyes wide open, trying to show her that I want out of the angry chair. She says, “Okay, twenty minutes is up. Let’s take a break, and we’ll try sitting for thirty minutes in a few hours. Sound good?”

  I want to scream. Twenty minutes! That’s all that was? This is absurd, but at least I get to lie back down in bed.

  Debbie and one of the hospital staff remove the restraints from the chair and they carefully transfer me back to my bed. I wiggle the fingers on my right hand and feel the cool texture of the white sheets. My bed is positioned at a slight incline. Debbie places the blue foam ball in my right h
and and I start squeezing it. I have grown used to this small ball, which reminds me of Wilson, Tom Hanks’s volleyball and sole companion in Cast Away.

  My parents walk into the room, grinning. I wait until my mom is looking right at me. I then slowly launch my right arm straight up, touching my lips, before it loses its battle with gravity and drops back down. She looks totally surprised. Debbie claps her hands in joy. “You did it! You blew your mom a kiss!”

  CHAPTER 10

  THROWING THE DISCUS

  I wonder if some one can actually perish from boredom. How do prisoners locked away in solitary confinement manage to maintain their mental clarity without going crazy? When it’s just you and your runaway thoughts keeping you company, it’s not like you can find pleasant distractions like reading or conversation to ward off the emptiness. I desperately want to break out of this jail that is my body. Can I ever become the old Brian? Will I ever stretch my legs in our backyard, swim in a cold lake, attend a rock concert?

  Each morning, nurses strap me into the angry chair, positioning my body so it can sit upright at a thirty-degree angle. This is supposed to improve blood flow in my legs. While I feel less like a corpse when I’m confined in the angry chair than lying in bed, I only wish I could tell the nurses to loosen the restraining belts which are cutting off the circulation in my chest, waist, and legs. The way they have me strapped down, I feel like a catatonic patient in a mental institution.

  Sitting like this, my paralyzed left arm dangles uselessly by my side, while my right arm rests inert upon my chest like I should be reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The fingers on my right hand look foreign and small, just paper-thin skin stretched tightly around the bones. They remind me of illustrations of skeletal fingers in my high school biology textbook. I wonder if my entire body is skin and bones. I must have lost a lot of weight. Exactly how much?

  Not long ago, I weighed 230 pounds. My weight changed according to the sports I played: swimming on the high school team in the winter and, in the spring, throwing the discus and putting the shot for the track team. I always had difficulty with this transition because swimming requires leanness and the field events require power and mass. In swimming, I tried to stay at 180 pounds, just right for my height of five feet and eleven inches. When track season started, I’d quickly gain 50 pounds by drinking a lot of protein shakes. I didn’t want to be big, but I had to be this size if I wanted to compete with other discus throwers in Maryland. I was one of the smallest throwers because most of them were burly linebackers who played football in the fall. Some weighed 300 pounds.

  If I couldn’t match their size and strength, my weapon was extreme foot speed. Since I had a much smaller frame, I was able to spin around at a much higher velocity. That is one of the most important factors in achieving height and distance when heaving the discus.

  I remember one track and field meet near the end of the season of my senior year. My teammate and good friend Sean Thompson had been virtually undefeated in shot put and discus since we started throwing together in our freshman year. He had college track scholarships to pretty much anywhere he wanted to go. Naturally, I had a burning desire to beat him one day. I had plans of swimming in college, but I still wanted to outthrow Sean just once.

  Sean and I were doing our warm-ups when the throwing judge blew his whistle for us to begin. I continued to practice my technique and do some push-ups to get the blood pumping. Sean was up first. He let out a thundering yell as he hurled the metal disc out into the grassy infield. When it landed, a big clump of dirt and grass flung upward. It was a good, decent throw, but not one of his best.

  I sat on a small hill away from everyone, waiting for my turn to throw. I felt the hot sun on my face and arms, and I smelled sunscreen in the slight breeze. I took a sip of Mountain Dew from its green plastic bottle. I held the discus in my right hand, feeling the cool metal on my palm and fingertips. I rubbed my hand in the dirt next to my feet and felt the discus’s dull edges to make sure I could get a good grip on it when I threw it. I placed my hand on the center, spreading my fingers wide. I pulled my index finger back so there was a space between my fingers to maximize the grip. I tossed the three-pound, nine-ounce disc a few inches up in the air, causing it to rotate several times before landing back between the ends of my fingers.

  The throwing judge called my name. I walked around the fenced-in barrier onto the concrete platform, and then into the circle. I took a deep breath for clarity, slowly exhaling as I shrugged my shoulders forward, getting in one last stretch. I did a quick practice spin and then aligned my feet at the top of the circle, visualizing the form and technique needed to throw as far as possible. I felt the disc’s weight in my hand, gripping it with my fingers and palm. I stood on my toes as I rotated my body as far back as it could travel, gaining momentum, spinning around as fast as I could, and launched the discus into the bright blue sky. After my body came to a stop, I watched the thin metal object slice through the air like a tiny spaceship flying off into the sky. It landed just a few feet short of Sean’s throw, and a surge of adrenaline flowed through me.

  I walked out of the circle and around the fence, glancing over at Sean to see his reaction. A look of concern was hidden behind his artificial smile. Secretly, I knew he was cursing my existence under his breath.

  After several minutes, the rest of the throwers took their turn in the circle, and then the second of three rounds began. I did a few quick drills over in the grass. It was Sean’s turn, and he launched the orb about ten feet past his first throw. He lifted his arms up in the air in victory, and I gave him a high five as I made my way into the circle.

  I went through the same motions, but this time the throw felt different. As I rotated, I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I was able to obtain more speed and the angle of release achieved the ideal plane. I watched the discus soar, landing a few inches further than Sean’s spot and nearly four feet past my personal record of 145 feet.

  I couldn’t believe what I had just accomplished, the culmination of thousands of throws I had done in practice and meets over the past four years. I walked over to my coach, Mr. Covey, who shook my hand and gave me a hug. Sean couldn’t top my throw in his final attempt, so I won the event. My athletic dream came true.

  But that satisfying memory is eclipsed by Room 19’s reality. I can’t even toss a pencil in the air or snap my fingers. A wave of rage crashes inside my head. My body, in response, reacts by shaking ferociously, trying to wriggle itself free from the restraints. But I am too weak, so nothing happens. I slam my head against the chair’s top in agitated fury and grind my teeth, shredding my tongue, to feel something other than numbness. Blood dribbles out of my mouth and down my chin.

  “Calm down, Brian,” says a nurse, rushing over. “It’s going to be okay. You’re getting better; things are improving. You just have to relax and be patient.” Somehow I gather the strength to move my right hand away from my chest and allow it to hang limply by my side. I can’t bear to look at my former discus throwing hand anymore.

  Despite everything, I need to start thinking like an optimist. Looking back at my physical therapy sessions, which began three days ago, I can see I’ve made visible progress. I can do the absolute basics—smile, blink, and squeeze hands. To someone of normal health, these activities would be considered infantile. But in a way, I’m relearning everything just like a baby. I keep thinking how this is affecting my parents. They are my inspiration. I can’t let them down now. I’m close to returning to the world of the living again.

  If I could only speak, I’d be able to leave behind this locked-in existence. I’d tell my parents that their son is a fighter. I’d thank the nurses and doctors for all the hard work it took to keep me going. I’d ask for a glass of water. I’d tell my physical therapist that I don’t like being awakened at six in the morning by having my chest tapped with her hand. I’d tell strangers in the hospital corridor who stare at me in fright to look away! I’d ask the nurse for a blanket whe
n I’m cold. I’d tell my parents to take me outside in a gurney or wheelchair.

  Regaining the ability to talk is the key that will unlock my dungeon’s door. Yet whenever I try saying anything, no sound comes out. Even when I attempt to mouth words, no one understands what I want to say. Nurses and doctors always react with the same puzzled look.

  Talking seems easy to do. Just exhale some air from your lungs, move your tongue and lips a little here and there, and you create syllables and, from there, words, and then entire sentences. I can’t even say “Daddy” or “Mama” like most one-year-olds. How long will I remain voiceless? The rest of my life? Why can’t anyone hear me?

  CHAPTER 11

  “HELLO”

  I’m in the angry chair when the nurse named Debbie comes into my room. She says that she is going to try to get me to speak. I blink to let her know that I understand, and I blink again with a faint smile to let her know that I’m excited. She is going to insert a small clear catheter into the hub of the tracheostomy tube at the base of my throat. This procedure will force me to cough, which is when I’m supposed to say something. It seems simple enough. I hope the process works.

  The tube tickles and scrapes my throat. Rather than cough, I gag. My eyes begin to tear up, while my breathing turns heavy with the pain. I don’t want Debbie to try again; there has to be another way of getting me to speak. But she can’t know what I’m thinking, and so, with kind, motherly assurance, she places her hand on my chest to calm me down. Several minutes later, she reinserts the tube, and this time I’m able to stifle the gag reflex and make a faint gurgling noise.