Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/09/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Okay kids, normally I'd keep this one under my hat and the pix in my family album, but it's dripping with LUG happiness like a Tilly hat giveaway, so I'll pass it along. Six months ago my friend Jay, who's known me since I was five and been the uncle I've always wanted, went into the hospital feeling dizzy from an infection. Within hours he'd gone into a coma where he stayed for eleven weeks. Luck put him in a hospital near me and I was able to ride the subway a mere few blocks during my lunch hours to sit with his wife and two grown children who took turns flying out from their respecitve new homes. It looked grim. The infection wouldn't go away, he wouldn't wake up, he underwent open heart surgery to try and cut away the infection which had lodged on a valve in his heart. But he was still unresponsive and doctors couldn't bring him back to consciousnes. They said that his high feaver could have caused brain damage and that the longer her was in a coma, the less likely he was to ever wake up. After months, he opened his eyes but showed no signs of recognizing anyone, his eyes would dart around while people talked to him. He lost a significant amount of weight and couldn't breathe without a ventelator, couldn't eat, couldn't drink, couldn't move. Then. One afternoon, I went to the hospital at lunch and his wife said: "I was leaning over his face saying 'Jay, Jay, can you hear me?' Like I always do, and he said: 'You're standing on my ventilator!' I looked around and said 'No! Jay, I'm not!' and he said, in a very labored voice, 'It was a joke!'" Suddenly, in the space of minutes, he had come back from whatever brink he'd been to, seemingly his old self. I went in to see him and he said, 'Kyle ... I'm ... too ... tired ... to ... talk.' Which was more than I'd ever hoped to hear from him again. He woke up, but he was completely paralized from the neck down. Gradually the paralysis subsided, he went through weeks of PT and yesterday, made three significant milestones, firstly he went home, for the first time in months, secondly, he walked ten feet with the aid of a walker, and thirdly, possibly most importantly, he met his granddaughter for the first time. I happened to be there when it happened and snapped two photos with my little leica. http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/2004/jay/1.jpg http://www.asc.upenn.edu/usr/cassidy/pix/2004/jay/2.jpg This sounds like something you'd read on the LUG, doesn't it? Now wipe away your tears and go photograph something. Put something on film and make this day count, people it's never going to be here again. Kyle