Alive on Opening Day Read Online Free PDF Page B

heart of the crisis was past, and Dan’s body was calming down,
but it hadn’t needed to calm down. Not with a starting heart rate of 40 and not
when he had been breathing only five times per minute. As he lay in
his room down the hall, Parks told the Hodges, Dan was down to
about four breaths per minute, and his heart rate stood at 35 beats
per minute.
     
    Parks was concerned they
may need to give him some help before the night was
through.
     
    “ What do you mean by
‘help,’ doctor?” David asked, worry creasing his face.
     
    “ We’re going to bring a
ventilator into his room, and I have a pulmonary specialist on
standby,” Parks responded. “If he drops to three breaths per minute
and stays there for more than half an hour, we’ll have to intubate
him. Do you know what that means?”
     
    David nodded, and Clara
began to cry again. Her mother had died of lung cancer 10 years
before and had spent the last several years of her life in and out
of hospitals, almost always attached to one machine or another. The
thought of her son suffering through the same sort of ordeal
devastated Clara.
     
    “ OK,” Parks said, and his
face turned even more solemn than it had been. “We also need to
monitor his heart closely, because if his pulse rate drops much
lower, he could develop an arrhythmia and go into cardiac
arrest.”
     
    “ He could die?” Clara
burst out.
     
    Parks raised a hand and
waved it back and forth. “No, Clara, I won’t let that happen,” he
told her. “But it IS possible his heart will stop, and if that
happens, then we’ll need to shock him to get it started again.” The
doctor paused and took in a deep breath. “And,” he continued, “I
want you to brace for the possibility we’ll need to use a pacemaker
to make his heart pump fast enough to keep him alive.”
     
    Clara whimpered but
nodded, and David pulled her close to him and kissed the top of her
head.
     
    —
     
    Doctors monitored Dan
throughout the night but decided to hold off on hooking him up to
any machines. By morning, they were feeding him through an IV, and
he still had his oxygen mask on, but Parks reported to the Hodges
that their son seemed to have stabilized. His heart rate had
leveled off at a very slow but steady 20 beats per minute, and his
breathing was hovering between three and four inhalations every 60
seconds. Not surprisingly, his blood pressure had also tanked, but
it, too, was holding on at 60 over 20.
     
    In short, Parks told David
and Clara, Dan was in a coma, and they didn’t have any good answers
as to why. The doctor left the hospital at eight that morning to
check in on his practice and to try and grab a few minutes of sleep
but promised he would return in the afternoon. He suggested they do
the same, but Clara insisted she wasn’t leaving Dan’s side, so
David volunteered to swing by their house and pick up some personal
items so he and his wife could be more comfortable.
     
    While David was out, Clara
camped out in a stiff, straight chair next to Dan’s bed and, when
her husband returned just before Noon, he found her sleeping with
her head lolled off to one side. He didn’t want to wake her but was
afraid she would hurt her neck and was relieved when a nurse burst
into the room five minutes later. Clara jolted awake and jerked in
her chair, then found David in the blazing overhead lights and
smiled at him.
     
    When the nurse had checked
on Dan and gone on her way, David persuaded Clara to go with him to
the hospital cafeteria. Neither one had much of an appetite, he
conceded, but they had to eat so they didn’t get sick. Dan needed
them, after all, even if they didn’t know what was wrong with him.
They were gone for less than half an hour, but when they stepped
through the door to Dan’s room, Dr. Parks was already tending his
patient, flipping through a chart and making little grunting
noises.
     
    The doctor lifted his head
when the Hodges walked in and nodded at them.
     
    “