"I emerged from the coma after 21 days"

by Colby Inzer

I had been working at the Cascade Lake 4-H camp as a cook and was given time off to travel to my grandparents' Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary in Carson City, Nevada. My father flew from Boise to Donnelly with one of his coworkers from the Idaho Air National Guard to pick me up for the trip to Carson. I remember the Cessna 172 lifting into the air eighty feet. I blacked out.

The Donnelly Fire Department was only five minutes from the airstrip and were there almost instantly. The EMT's immediately stabilized and transported us to McCall Memorial Hospital. A newly formed trauma response team had the challenging task of treating three people severely injured in an airplane accident. This new team did their best to save us all, but my father was pronounced dead at the scene. The pilot was transferred by Lifeflight to Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center (SARMC). Since I was more stable, I was flown to Boise in a fixed wing aircraft to SARMC. There, I underwent surgery for a compressed L3, was monitored for brain tissue swelling, a broken hand, and a fractured heel.

I remained in a comatose state for three weeks.

Colby Inzer at Boise State University.

My mother, Minnie Inzer, constantly played instrumental music from my collection. I emerged from the coma after twenty-one days. My pastor's wife, Heather Kingrey, asked me if I could remember anything. I responded through clenched teeth, "I remember my sister and all my cousins, reading me those stupid get-well cards." I had received many cards from friends and family from all over the world. Now I see these cards and think, "Just look at how much these people cared!" I now thank the Lord that I have friends and family who cared so much. I do not remember this particular episode happening, showing that mentally I was still not completely out of the coma.

The first memory I have after the coma is getting my hair cut. I remember looking in the mirror and the snip of the scissors. After this experience, I started to recover at a rapid rate. I spent as much time in therapy as the insurance provider I was covered by would allow---only forty days.

My first few conscious activities with my Occupational Therapist, Linda Biddle, focused on Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) such as getting dressed and personal hygiene activities. She would try to reteach me to dress myself; I would throw socks at her. Linda threw them right back and made me put them on anyway. Now the "sock throwing incident" is a joke between the two of us that will be with us forever. The most poignant evidence to show how far I have recovered is a clock that Linda had me draw. She first wrote in the 12, 3, 6, & 9, and instructed me to draw the rest of the clock with the corresponding numbers. The first clock I drew was hardly recognizable as a clock-with the numbers spiraling in an ever tighter circle and none of the spirals ever making it back up to the twelve. In later sessions I was able to draw the clock reasonably well and mark correctly the desired time. I remember the later sessions much more clearly with her when we dealt more with decision making and problem solving.

During many of the therapy sessions, I was frustrated that I had to relearn how to do the mundane, everyday tasks that most people take for granted. Things such as becoming continent, talking clearly, walking, writing, and using discretion with people when I am in a conversation. Even after extensive therapy I still feel frustration when talking to a person, as a result of the head injury. I know what I want to tell them, but can't find the right words and/or sentence structure to convey what I am trying to say. During these periodic episodes, I develop a stutter that impairs understanding even further.

Because of insurance restrictions, I was only allowed forty short days inpatient and outpatient therapy. I will thank God for the rest of my life that I was able to recover so much in such a short period of time. On the last day of my outpatient therapy, in mid-October, I was downhearted that I wasn't going to be able to see any of my therapists again. For as much as I hated therapy, and those "torturing" me with it in the beginning, I had grown to understand that they were there to help.

Three months after the initial accident, in November, I came down with a horrendous headache that felt like a cross between a migraine and Temporal Lobe Seizures, which I had as a young child. Since I was still seeing Dr. Peggy Doucette, my rehabilitation physician, I told her about the headaches at a scheduled routine follow-up appointment with her. I requested an EEG, which Dr. Doucette was able to schedule, along with a CT scan. Fortunately, the CT was scheduled before the EEG. As the scan took place, the technicians noticed something dreadfully wrong and called Dr. Doucette immediately. I had just had my thoracolumbar-sacral orthosis removed during daylight hours, because my back had regained much of the muscle tone it needed. The CT technicians told me to wait in the X-ray waiting room. No reason was given. The chairs in this waiting room are of a construction that may be ergonomically correct but, on my back freshly out of a cast, hurt like the dickens.

When my back started to cause too much pain, I convinced my mother to accompany me upstairs to the floor I was on during rehabilitation to say hello to my doctors and therapists. When we arrived at the nurses desk, I saw one of my speech pathologists and the back of Dr. Doucette on the phone. During the conversation with my speech therapist, he overheard Dr. Doucette tell someone on the phone that I was downstairs in the waiting room. The therapist turned to her and said, "No, Dr. Doucette, he's right here!" As she turned around, I watched her face turn as white as her labcoat as she exclaimed, "Get yourself back downstairs and do not use the stairs---take the elevator. Did you walk up or take the elevator?"

"The elevator."

"Good, now use it again and get back downstairs, NOW", she emphatically stated.

Several minutes after this exchange, Dr. Henbest, the neurosurgeon on call, came to talk to me. It is a conversation that I will never forget. After asking me if I had anything to eat that day, Dr. Henbest told me that he was going to perform a "Twist tube drill" on me that evening. A subdural hematoma had developed, and the pressure needed to be immediately relieved. The hematoma had already pushed the midline of my brain over to the right eight millimeters. I was in danger of dying. The pressure inside my head should have made me at least pass out, but the only symptom I was experiencing was a headache!

After the six hour emergency procedure, I was admitted into the Neuro unit---a recovery center for patients that are not critical enough to be in ICU. I had to wait for the pressure to subside. After a day and a half of draining, through a shunt over my left sideburns another membrane was discovered between my brain, the blood, and cranium. As much as he was trying to avoid it, Dr. Henbest determined that he would have to perform a craniotomy to drain the blood.

As the surgery progressed into the fifth hour, Dr. Henbest emerged from the OR to tell Mom, Pastor John, and Heather that although the procedure was progressing slower than anticipated, the surgery was advancing fine and it appeared that I would recover. The surgery took seven hours. During the surgery, the removed piece of my cranium shattered, and Dr. Henbest had to insert a titanium plate into the top of my head. I recovered for a week in the hospital and continued to recover at home.

Since the accident---these seven years ago---I have graduated from high school with a 3.5 GPA, and will receive a B.S. in Health Science in May. I hope to further my education and obtain a Master's degree in Occupational Therapy to help others who require therapy services. ---TP