A Night I'll Never Forget...

Four years ago tonight something happened that changed my son's life forever.

The night started out innocently enough - a picnic at his cousin Michaels with all the cousins and their children. Food, fun, laughter...and fireworks.

Late in the evening Michael and Chris were setting off fireworks for the family (who was standing across the yard). It was time for the last firework of the night - a 4" mortar. Michael lit it and the two of them ran back to the others - but heard an odd noise...

My son remembers nothing after that.

According to Michael and the others, he and my son turned around to see what was happening - the firework was defective and was exploding out instead of up. Michael told me that he and Chris jumped in front of the children to protect them.

And they took the hit.

My son, Chris, was hit with a cinder block in the face and thrown approximately 15 feet into the air. Michael was injured too. The cousins attended to Michael immediately as he was bleeding horribly.

They thought my boy was dead.

Approximately 10 minutes later they said there was a scream from the bowels of Hell - it was coming from my son. Kathy (another cousin) ran to him and cradled him with towels and blankets until the rescue squad got there.

The blast took out a large section of wood privacy fence. It shattered all the windows in a nearby van and left large gaping holes in the side of Michaels garage. They found cinder block three blocks away from Michaels house. I was told it looked like a war zone.

Both boys were rushed to the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor. They were placed in the trauma/burn unit.

My ex called me about 5:30 the next morning to tell me Chris had been in an accident. I immediately thought "car"...and then he gave me the news. He told me that the dimple on my son's chin was gone.

I threw things into a bag immediately and got ready to leave. Before I did I called the hospital. I had to talk to someone that had seen my child and could tell me what was going on. The nurse handed the phone to my child..."Mom, don't go getting upset like you always do!" I heard. It was like a voice from heaven. He told me he loved me and I said the same. We hung up and I was out the door.

I arrived at the hospital before 9am. My son was in surgery. I sat there in this huge waiting room alone. Complete silence surrounding me. I had no idea what was going on with my child. His father had gone home to bed.

A few hours later a doctor appeared. He told me they were working on my son's arm and showed me xrays. They had already worked on his face. He had 17 facial fractures. His lower jaw was shattered inside and they had to put in two titanium plates to hold it together. The nerves in the lower right part of his face were destroyed. His eye was ok even though the bone around it was broken. They stitched up the cuts too. His arm was another matter. When they opened it up the bones just fell out in pieces...lots of little pieces.

My son was put into a chemically induced coma for five days. I sat by his bedside from 6am til 11pm when they ran me out. I slept in the waiting room - when I did sleep.

The next day they did more surgery on his arm, to clean out the wound more. He still had more shrapnel in there to get out.

A few days later, and a couple of surgeries later, they took Chris off the vent and woke him up. He was so confused, was having severe hallucinations from the moriphine. He thought he had been hit by a car. I told him over and over and over what happened, but he couldnt remember from one minute to the next. He got very combative at times. At 11:30 that night I headed to a hotel to get some sleep, only to be back to the hospital less than an hour later. They needed to take blood for the surgery the next day and I was needed to calm him down, and I did. I stood by his bedside (which was a miracle they let me...no one stays in rooms all night with patients in the trauma icu) but when I had to leave for a bit early in the morning for the doctors to come in, he jumped up and yanked out his two tubes he still had in him - one for feeding, one for drainage. So, again I was back in there to calm him until they took him down for more surgery on the arm, this time a skin graft. He slept most of that day, and that evening his girlfriend and father said they would stay with him for a while so I could go get some sleep. I went back to the hotel and fell asleep and was back there the next morning about 6:30am. They had moved him over night into a "step down" room. When I walked in he said "Mom! I've been telling them to call you!" (He had no idea I had been there the whole time.) "Mom, take me home. I just wanna lay on the bed, drink pop and eat potato chips with you and watch TV". He wasnt happy when I told him I couldnt take him home yet. I was thrilled that he was alert and talking!"

We sat and talked a lot on that Friday, trying to get him to understand what happened. His cousin Michael came in to visit often (He had basically the same type injury to his right arm as Chris - and his left wrist was broken and his thumb was almost totally severed from his hand - but was reconnected successfully.) The next night I stayed with him in his room - he was so ill from all the moriphine, and just the trauma...and he had a nurse from hell that night and afternoon that would NOT do anything for him - so I did. I got no sleep that night, but I was where I needed to be.

That Saturday was better. Except we had a hell of a time with him and the feeding tube. The nurse had turned it on when he was sleeping (you do not do that when a patient is laying down)...so he was very ill when he woke up. We actually got him out of bed in the morning and walked him down the hall a little ways - and we stopped, and he looked in the mirror - he finally wanted to see. I held him as he cried.

There have been 18 surgeries since that day in 2002. It's not been an easy trip for my child but he has survived in more ways than one. He still has his arm, and it works! He is whole and well.

And I still have my boy to hug - complete with the dimple in his chin :)