Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 9, 1994 TAG: 9410220016
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JOE KENNEDY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
It was just after the dinner hour. Foutz, a 22-year-old bulldozer operator, had had a couple of beers to ease the misery of a head cold. He was flying down Camp Jaycee Road in Bedford County near Montvale.
``I was running about 80 miles an hour,'' he says, ``and my tire blew out.''
The teal Mustang with the killer CD player where the back seat used to be, with its 12 audio speakers and its 302-cubic inch V-8 under the hood, careened off the left side of the road and landed upside down in a creek.
John's friend received minor injuries. John was not that lucky.
``I was the first one to find out about it,'' says Amy Foutz, John's sister, who is 21. John's former wife, Cindy, was on the rescue squad that responded to the call. When she saw John, to whom she had been married for eight months, she left the scene.
``She came to the door screaming that John had been in a wreck and that they were flying him by Life Guard 10 to the hospital,'' Amy says. ``I was hysterical. I got on the phone with my mom and dad, and I rode with my fiance down to the hospital. I can remember seeing the helicopter above us on the way, and it was landing when we got there.''
At Roanoke Memorial, ``We just went in screaming, wanting to know where John was,'' Amy says. A patient representative took them to a room and told the family what the medical team was finding as it examined him.
John was unconscious, they were told. He had a severe brain injury.
As they waited, the hospital's emergency team was putting in a nasal tube to protect John Foutz's airway. They put him through a CT scan and evaluated his responses.
Foutz did not respond to sight or sound. He would extend his arms when he was stimulated painfully. The CT scan showed no blood clot, but the injury appeared to be a brain stem contusion caused by the whipping of his skull. The violent shaking of the head had torn millions of brain fibers apart and caused swelling.
``He was about as bad as you can get,'' says Dr. Ralph O. Dunker Jr., the attending neurosurgeon.
He had facial fractures, blood in his right eye, which showed no movement, and blood in his center sinuses. Brain fluid leaked from his right ear. One good sign was the rapid movement of his left eye, which usually means a lighter coma. Another was the lack of damage to his spinal cord.
The medical team put Foutz on a ventilator, inserted a catheter for his urine and gave him medication to offset possible damage to his pituitary gland. Team members limited his fluids to reduce the swelling of his brain. They put a feeding tube into his stomach.
Foutz had a closed head injury. He had joined the 2 million or so Americans who sustain open or closed head injuries each year. One-half million of them warrant hospital treatment, and, nationwide, 70,000 to 90,000 of those people will have lifelong physical, mental and psychological disabilities as a result.
There are more than 14,000 head injuries in Virginia each year.
Foutz's family wanted to know if he would be all right.
``That's always the question,'' Dunker says. ``All we can tell the family, and I never know the right way, is that `All the information we have now is ... [that he] has suffered brain damage which will not recover, because the brain has died.'''
People assume that severe impairment is unavoidable, but that depends, the neurosurgeon says. Each injury is unique. Predictions are difficult to make. Most of the recovery takes place early, and two years commonly pass before the extent of major recovery is known.
\ Foutz spent 18 days on the ventilator. Nearly six weeks went by before he came out of his coma, on Dec. 5, 1992. Early on, his family sat outside the neurointensive care unit. Every time the door opened, they thought someone was coming to tell them he had died.
John, 6 foot 3 and 238 pounds, had been the life of every party. His friends came in droves to see him, and his family later would spend hours moving his arms and legs, talking to him, playing tapes of his favorite music and his friends' voices, hoping to bring him to.
The day he awoke, his parents had traveled to Richmond to look at facilities for follow-up care. His sister cut his hair while they were gone, and when they returned, he stirred and said, ``Mom, it itches.''
He spent three months at the hospital's rehabilitation center, his bills paid by the Virginia Department of Rehabilitation Services. He had no health insurance.
While in rehab, he went through periods of crying, anger and agitation, common to people with head injuries. His parents attended meetings of a head-injury support group in Roanoke.
The accident ``put him right back to being an infant,'' says Judy Foutz, his mother. ``He had to learn to sit up, eat, learn to use his hands, even.''
A nurse at Roanoke Memorial, she felt little hope until one day shortly before he left intensive care.
``I was working at the hospital and charting all my patients,'' she says. ``I really wasn't thinking about him. I felt somebody walk up beside me and it was like - I didn't really hear a voice, but it was a thought. It said, `Don't be afraid. I'm here.' You could feel it move right up to me, and it said, `Don't be afraid, I'm here.' Louder that time. It was like I almost knew God was telling me he was going to be OK, but I was afraid to trust it.''
John's father, Jayhugh, felt more optimistic when he saw John, in a brace, struggle to walk while using the parallel bars. ``That's when I figured, `He's going to come back a long way,''' he says.
After John left the hospital, he stayed at his parents' home in Blue Ridge. On Sept. 30, 1993, he enrolled in the Hollins Head Injury Program. By then, he had made uncommon progress. But he was impulsive. The staff tried to slow him down in speaking and in whatever else he did. He wasn't fully aware of the deficits his injury had caused. But he was a delight in every respect, says program coordinator Patty Thompson.
``John's a real clown,'' she says. ``He has a funny, funny sense of humor.''
He worked hard, did everything he could to improve.
Last Feb. 28, he moved to the Woodrow Wilson Rehabilitation Center in Fishersville. The center's goal is to retrain people who have been disabled for jobs, if possible.
Foutz was evaluated and enrolled in speech, physical and occupational therapy. He also underwent cognitive retraining. His goals were to get his driver's license again and return to the workforce.
He earned his license last summer. Matching his skills to a job is taking longer.
Drafting didn't work out, despite his high interest in it. Landscaping didn't suit, either. Now he is working under supervision as custodian inside and out of a church in Staunton.
This part of recovery is ``a tough time,'' says Carol Brunk, his counselor at Woodrow Wilson. Many people are discouraged by their inability to regain their former skills. John, though, is realistic, she says. He has impairments, but they are far less severe than those of many clients at the center.
\ Home for a weekend in June, John Foutz sat in the living room of his parents' home and said the cause of his car wreck was ``just my stupidity.'' Prior to that night, he ``wasn't too responsible,'' he said. He drank beer, chased girls, smoked a bit of pot. He cruised Williamson Road, shot pool in bars, listened to heavy-metal music. He wasn't much different, he said, from most of the people he knew.
``I thought I was young, but I was cocky and stupid.''
Slowly, he began to realize there was more to life. He thought about going back to school and trying to get a better job.
``I was ready for a change.''
The change came more suddenly, and violently, than he anticipated. While he goes out occasionally (religiously wearing his seatbelt,) he is mostly ``a homebody'' when he's in Blue Ridge.
``I can't drink because the doctors tell me if I get drunk, I could go into a coma again, so I don't push that issue at all.'' He avoids marijuana, and he stays out of bars.
He does drive, though he must borrow cars from family or friends to do so. His memory is not what it was.
When he thinks of his accident and injury, ``It's like I was in a dream. I try to wake up, but I can't.''
His spirits are good. His optimism and his family's unwavering support are credited by many with contributing heavily to his recovery.
He wants to be able to live independently and support himself. His parents, in their late 40s, want the same things. His counselors think he'll be able to, though it might be a while.
\ In late September, John Foutz is on the phone from Fishersville. He says he has been working at the church. He sounds good. He thinks he might be coming home soon to stay, but he's not sure.
``I get surprises,'' he says, ``things I don't expect to get.''
Plans? None. ``My life's so altered right now it's hard to make good judgments.''
In June, he said he was thankful he got hurt, because it taught him a lesson. He said he wanted to ``reach out and touch somebody'' with his story. He hoped eventually he would be able to visit schools and talk about what he'd been through. He hoped to help other young people avoid his mistakes. But he remembered how he felt before his accident, and wondered if anyone would listen.
``People my age think they're superman,'' he said.
Now, on the telephone, his message to his peers is the same: ``Don't get stoned, and don't get drunk and drive,'' he says. ``I got stoned and went driving around like a dummy.''
At the rehabilitation center, ``I see kids younger than I am in wheelchairs because of doing that stuff. You don't realize how bad a process can be till you come in touch with it a couple times.''
Keywords:
PORFILE
by CNB