There are many things that define me—my career, my friendships, the places I’ve lived—but none of them come close to the role that matters most.
First and foremost, I’m a father.
Ask anyone who knows me well and they’ll probably tell you I talk about my two sons far more than is socially acceptable. I make no apology for it. Watching them grow into good men has been the greatest privilege of my life.
That scenario was playing out in real time with my 21 year old son who recently completed a semester abroad in Madrid this spring and immediately transitioned into a full summer internship at Fidelity in Denver which he was able to obtain as a rising senior at the University of Colorado Boulder (SKO Buffs!) with a major in Business Finance. He was dating a new girlfriend he met while abroad who lived in Maine and was excited to see her just before heading back home for a few short weeks and starting his senior year. As a father I could not be more proud of the man he had become, the experiences in life he had already realized and so much more ahead for him.
Then 6 weeks ago my life was suddenly divided into two parts: the time before my son suffered a major brain aneurysm and every day after that terrifying moment.. July 31 at 8:15pm started the nightmare scenario no parent ever wants to live through. A call from the ER on the other side of the country explaining that my son had collapsed and was in the ICU at a trauma one medical center in Portland Maine and his mom and I needed to get there as soon as possible as they were not sure if he was going to survive the night.
For a fleeting moment I could not process what I was hearing. This could not possibly be happening to my son who was a fit normal healthy young man and had no previous symptoms that could indicate that a ticking time bomb had been building in his brain for what we now know had been for some time. My fatherly protective instincts immediately kicked in. 90 minutes after the call and packing random clothes into a suitcase for a journey I had no idea how long or what condition I would return, I found myself buckling into my middle row seat to take a red eye to Boston and then renting a car to get to Portland. Just before the plane doors closed the surgeon called to give me the latest on his condition and how they were planning to take him into surgery in a few hours once he stabilized. A private person by nature I was forced to rapid fire the tough questions as a desperately concerned parent, knowing every person within a few rows of me could hear our conversation and fell silent in what I took as a sign of respect and shared concern for a stranger that was doing everything he could just to hold it together.
Is he conscious?
Has there been brain damage?
Is he in pain?
All I could hear was my heart trying to burst out of my chest as I tried to consume all of the information coming my way including the photo that came through by text showing a CT scan that clearly indicated blood was actively pooling in my son’s brain.
3 hours earlier I was at a local comedy show.
Now I’m doing online search queries on life expectancy for someone who just experienced a subarachnoid hemorrhage.
The answers only perpetuated my worst fears. Needless to say I’ve been on many long flights but this will forever be the toughest one I’ll ever experience in my life. Six hours, wide awake swimming in dark thoughts and feeling too afraid to look down at my phone to see any text message updates from the hospital staff that was assigned to keep me updated along the journey. Everything else in my life at that moment felt meaningless in comparison.
Eight hours later and a full 24 hours since I last slept, I found myself in a hospital room with my son’s surgeon as he explained to me that the procedure to stop the bleeding and repair the hemorrhage was deemed a success. A huge sigh of relief. But I was soon enlightened by the surgeon that the next phase of the battle was just beginning, one that would be equally terrifying. Even with successful procedures, mortality rates can be as high as 40% within the 1st month and there is a meaningful risk of “after shocks” that can occur at any time when the repaired blood vessels spontaneously compress from the repaired blood flow in the brain. They are called Vasospasms and left untreated lead to major debilitating strokes. Age plays a major factor on how risky this journey would be and while youth was on his side, there was no way to know when or if complications would arise.
So now my son enters the recovery journey which means a minimum of 2 weeks in the ICU where nurses and doctors will monitor him every hour with cognition tests to treat any complications that may arise from the procedure. 2 weeks. That’s 336 cognitive checks. The doctors prepare me for patients that go through this length of sleep deprivation to become erratic and even enter a period of psychosis. I was not even remotely prepared for this emotionally let alone logistically. With 20 min allocated to stuff clothes into a suitcase before I left for the east coast I’ve woefully under packed and was now on a journey to find a place to live temporarily in a city I’d never visited before, during the height of high season for tourism. Small challenges compared to what my son was facing. He faced the surgery alone… his mom and I would be there for him on the road to recovery.
The next two weeks would become an exercise in patience, uncertainty and hope. Every hour brought another neurological exam. Every day brought another reminder that recovery after a brain aneurysm isn’t measured in days but in tiny victories. The nurses asked him to rate his headaches on a scale from one to ten. Some days were a two or three, others were seven or eight and my son never complained once.. He ate breakfast. He walked a few steps and was eventually able to take a shower. No vasospasms had materialized but they could trigger at any moment. Tomorrow became too far away to think about. Our family learned to celebrate hours instead of weeks. I could not help him heal..the doctors and nurses would take care of that so I looked for other ways to help. I became his advocate. I took notes during every conversation with the doctors. I coordinated with his summer internship employer that he would not be able to complete the full program. I worked with the university to approve medical accommodations for his eventual return, a goal neither he or I would consider any other possibility. I researched medications. I asked questions. Lots of questions. Not because I thought I knew more than the medical professionals, but because asking questions was the only thing that made me feel like I was still contributing to his recovery.
Somewhere along the way, the hospital stopped feeling unfamiliar. The front desk staff would have my daily guest badge ready for me when I arrived in the morning which became a strange but welcome ritual. Not sure why, but I kept each visitor badge like some sort of twisted souvenir collection for reasons I still can’t truly explain. The labyrinth of navigating the hospital hallways became second nature like I had worked there for many years. I had my morning cafeteria smoothie ritual, an afternoon walk to clear my head and pick up takeout for dinner where we’d settle in during the evening to knock out the list of classic movies we had yet to watch to help pass the time. The first week there were many nights sleeping in the hospital room experimenting with various visitor “beds” the ICU nurse would procure for me as some sort of weird Goldilocks experiment. They ranged from Southwest middle seat last row (terrible), to United Economy Plus (tolerable), to Delta One lie flat (good). None allowed a full night’s rest but I still had the luxury to escape when I wanted my hotel room bed.
My son’s 21st birthday was a legendary experience in Las Vegas with friends and family. His 22nd was in an ICU bed. No parent imagines celebrating their child’s birthday in a hospital but the nurses improvised decorations with inflated surgical gloves that became birthday balloons and ice cream cake his mom had procured from a local bakery. It wasn’t the celebration any of us had imagined but It turned out to be one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
With the most critical phase of his recovery when compilations tend to arise behind us, the new focus was getting him discharged. I had to play a careful balancing act, taking into consideration the perspective of his care team who are solely focused on the full recovery of their patient and my son who desperately wanted to go home. Most people in their entire lives spend maybe one or two days admitted to a hospital. At an age before he could legally rent a car, he had logged 12 days and counting. I could see the hope starting to drain out of him and that was also a very tough moment for me as a father.
Today, 49 days after I got the nightmare call, I’m thrilled to say his recovery has exceeded every expectation we were given that first terrifying night and his mom and I were able to see him off to school for his final year of college a few week ago, a milestone no one thought possible. Now he’s complaining about homework, talking about football, hanging out with friends and figuring out where life will take him after college. Some happy news, he got a full time offer from his summer internship at Fidelity to join them after his senior year is completed. He was twenty-two again. He still has medications, some of which he may be on for the foreseeable future. He still has healing ahead of him. But he has his future back and I’ll be forever grateful for the doctors, nurses and incredible medical advances that allow such a relatively fast recovery.
This life event has changed me in some permanent way that I’m still processing, and my own personal recovery is taking its own journey that I can’t foresee where this will take me. Only now could I find the words to write about this. The trauma is still there lingering like a dull pain that I hope will eventually dissipate but I can’t be sure. There is one thought that never leaves me. I can’t shake the fact that this aneurysm occurred when was together with his girlfriend on the other side of the country, 20 min from a trauma one medical center. If this event had happened two days earlier or two days later he’s alone back in Boulder at his internship in his apartment and very likely a much worse outcome I can’t imagine. He was incredibly lucky in that regard.
I now have more clarity on the things that matter to me and the superfluous things that do not. I take that phenomenon as a positive evolution in my life which I hope never dissipates. One thought is more clear to me than ever: As parents we spend our lives trying to protect our children. And when we discover we can’t, we learn instead to be grateful for every ordinary day we’re lucky enough to have with them.