My son, Alex, was 17 years old when he had an accident on his way home from his girlfriend’s house. His tire blew out and he lost control of his truck. Alex ended up in a small creek. One of my friends called to let me know about the accident. My husband and I drove as fast as we could to get to the crash site, however, he was already taken by ambulance to the closest hospital for immediate care. When we made it to the hospital, my husband and I were taken to a small room and told that Alex had been under the water for over 15 minutes and they showed significant brain damage. Alex was transferred to another hospital in the area that was more prepared to handle pediatric ICU cases. The 1st night we were in the ICU, Alex would squeeze my hand in response to me talking to him. The staff took him to do a neural scan the 2nd day and he coded while on the way down and they were able to bring him back with CPR. They returned Alex to his room and he started having issues with the ventilator and had a collapsed lung, the doctor said he had developed ARDS and had started having small seizures. The doctor decided that Alex needed to be medically paralyzed to give his body the rest it needed to heal. On the 3rd night, the staff took Alex down for the neural scan and we were given the news that there was no brain activity. I refused to believe this, so they stopped the paralytic and said they would do a final test the next day. On the 4th day, the doctor came in and completed the tests to see if Alex would respond to painful stimulation, he did not. Then they turned off the vent for 1 minute, I begged him to take a breath, but he wouldn’t. The ICU staff allowed all of his family and friends to come to his room. He was pronounced brain dead at 1:29 PM surrounded by love. My husband and I reached out to the organ donation team to hopefully have something good come out of our sadness. My mom and Alex’s best friend’s grandma both were on the kidney transplant list, unfortunately he was not a match for either of them. However, Alex was able to save the lives of 3 people and enrich the lives of many more through organ, eye, bone, and tissue donation. He is my hero 💜
