To others, Nick seems like a perfectly normal 10-year-old boy. He plays hockey and soccer. He takes piano lessons. He annoys his brothers. But six years ago, Nick was on the edge of death and received last rites -- a Catholic ritual to deliver sacraments to those who are dying. That he eventually woke up from his coma and began reclaiming his life seems nothing short of miraculous. However, he emerged a different kid, and his family has had to say "goodbye" to the old Nick and welcome the new one.
I first met Nick's mom, Kristin, at a school sports event this spring, and our conversation somehow meandered to Nick and his near-death experience. She later filled in the details this way:
Nicklas was 4 years old when he contracted mosquito-borne encephalitis in his hometown of Orono, Minnesota, a small lakeside city just west of Minneapolis. Nick was an outgoing kid who would "light up a room when he walked in," Kristin explains.
One night, out of the blue, she found him smashing his head against some bathroom floor tiles at home, screaming about the unbearable pain. At the hospital, as the medical team conducted tests to figure out his diagnosis, Nick suffered a seizure and set off the hospital's emergency code. Kristin called her husband, Jim (who was home with their two other sons, then aged six months and six years) and other family members to get there as soon as possible. The doctors stabilized Nick in a drug-induced coma, but he soon took a turn for the worse, falling into a full-blown coma with no heart, lung, or brain function.
"Jim and I were standing in the corridor of the ICU staring at each other and thinking, 'He's dying right this minute, and the doctors are going to do whatever they can, but what are we supposed to do?' I wasn't ready to say goodbye, but I didn't want him to die without being able to say goodbye. It was a very tough moment."
Kristin and Jim knew that Nick could wind up in a vegetative state, and several members of the medical team urged them to discontinue life support. "It felt as if people were doubting us left and right," Kristin recalls. "One group took us to the ethics board at Children's [Hospital] Minneapolis and tried to force us to turn off the machines."
At the same time, various nurses and doctors affirmed their decision, and their neurologist -- who was also an observant Jew – advised them to "do what you believe God would want," according to Kristin. "So we sat by Nick's bedside reading and talking to him. His older brother, Matt, would spread Playmobil [plastic toy figures] all over his bed. Nick was completely comatose; he had 15 lines at one point and was on a full ventilator, but Matt would slide the wires and tubes over, park himself on the bed, and talk to him as if he were just asleep. He’d say, 'Nick, I really wish you'd hurry up and come home. … I can't believe you haven't woken up yet.'"
As time passed, however, Kristin began wondering whether she and Jim were interfering with God's will by keeping Nick alive artificially -– since a decade earlier, he most likely would have died from his illness. So they decided to contact their family priest to administer last rites.
"It was about 3 a.m., and I left the room to get some food," she remembers. "When I came back, our priest and the Jewish neurologist had arrived and were forehead-to-forehead, praying over Nick's bed, and the nurses were bawling. One of the nurses put her hand on my hand and said, "Your son is going to live; the power in this room was more than any of us could take."
Days afterwards, Nick showed a sign of life -– by coughing after doctors removed his breathing tube to investigate an infection that had spiked in his lungs. Although the boy remained in a coma, he was breathing on his own. For the next few weeks, Kristin continued documenting Nick's journey through an online journal, and people around the world prayed for him to wake up. "Nick was on so many prayer chains," Kristin says. "He was bringing people together and closer to their faith at a time when most people would feel very dark, doubtful, and angry. We could look at him as representing hope or as anger toward God for letting us down; a lot of people chose hope."
On the 62nd day, when Kristin finally went home to rest and to be with the couple's baby, Nick emerged enough from his coma to crawl into his father's arms. That began a long, long recovery process. He could not see, talk, or walk for some time and eventually relearned those skills alongside his little brother, Luke. He had massive seizures for several years and was, at first, expected to have mental retardation. His neurological team expects his body will take a decade to fully recover what was lost, according to Kristin.
But perhaps the biggest change was in Nick's personality. "Nick used to be self-confident and comfortable walking into a room full of strangers; now he is extremely shy and withdrawn. Our social workers told us, 'The child you had is dead; he coded three times. This is not the son you gave birth to or had for four years. So you need to grieve as though you lost him and accept that somebody else has been left in his place.' People wanted to rejoice that Nick was back, but we felt we had a stranger in our midst."
On the other hand, Kristin and her family set about getting to know the "new Nick." He is gifted musically, very compassionate, and already wants to be a doctor. He also feels connected to Kristin's late brother, Danny, a fighter pilot who was killed during training maneuvers over Spain in 1989. Nick used to visit his uncle's grave regularly in Minnesota (before they moved East), and "Nicklas talks to Danny regularly. He knows they both faced death and that Nick came out on the other side. The old Nick was my brother's spirit, and I know that Danny is watching him and taking care of him."
Kristin has come to terms with these two losses by recognizing that neither the 'old Nick' nor Danny are really gone. "They have become knitted into our conscience," she reflects. "The losses are terrible, but these people were in our hearts, and nobody can take them out."
Consider this . . .
Saying "goodbye" can mean saying "hello" to something or someone different.
Appreciate every day, because you never know what will happen next.
