Thursday, January 15, 2009
Imagine your son—beautiful, strong, passionate about surfing and skateboarding, and just loving life. Imagine him proud of his hometown, sharing his great grin with the tourists, and engaging in friendly small talk as he collects their parking tickets at the Stearns Wharf kiosk.
Then imagine your daughter waking you up with a phone call one morning to tell you “something terrible” has happened to him. I experienced this nightmare on June 7, 2008. Seven months later, the nightmare is not over.
My son, Nicholas Cavalier, was a victim of a violent crime earlier that morning. It was never reported in the newspaper, nor have the culprits ever been apprehended. On the way home from being downtown, Nicholas is said to have gone to the aid of a friend who was jumped and being beaten by a gang. According to the police report, Nicholas received a kick to his face and fell, hitting the back of his head hard on the ground. He was taken to the hospital.
That night, life-threatening pressure built up in Nicholas’s brain due to internal bleeding. He required more than five hours of brain surgery, after which he was returned to intensive care and basically put on ice, medically paralyzed and heavily sedated. When Nicholas came to four weeks later, he was blind. He was transferred to Goleta Valley Cottage Sub Acute Care, where I spent evenings reading to him, and his father worked with the physical therapist helping Nicholas relearn to walk.
Faith Magdalena and Nicholas Cavalier
Nicholas began the next part of his journey five weeks later at the Rehabilitation Institute of Santa Barbara. The physical and occupational therapy was very helpful, yet this was also where “code greens,” feeble attempts at behavioral rehabilitation, and outright abuse took place. This is where I don’t think you would want your child to be if he or she had a serious brain injury and a ton of hurt for the loss of life as he or she once knew it.
What exactly is code green? I saw it as where security guards and other staff would come running to hold down my noncompliant son. The day before Nicholas was discharged, I saw a big dog brought in for additional security.
Then there was the nurse abuse. I was called into the administration office to be told, “We are sorry to inform you that your son was abused by one of our nurses. We have fired him and an adult protective report was filed.” Word has it that Nicholas was struck on the leg, called vile names, and forced into the Posey bed, essentially a zipped-up netted bed cage, where he had to listen to the blaring television station the nurse turned on.
Nicholas was discharged, after three months at the Rehab Institute, to his father and me. Traumatized and distraught, wanting our son protected, we didn’t know what we were getting ourselves and Nicholas into by bringing him home when he was not ready.
Nicholas was still in denial, wanting to go to work and surf and hang out with his friends. He hadn’t closed the door on his past life. He still hasn’t been able to acknowledge that his life is changed. Nicholas is not yet healed to the place where he realizes that he has severe limitations. He believes he can see. He should never have been allowed to come home until his impulsivity and periodic agitation were brought under control. He became threatening and scary when he did not get his way.
We were not able to keep him safe from his impulses. Nicholas ended up at the emergency room and was admitted to Cottage Hospital again.
The nightmare for Nicholas then went to another level.
Imagine seeing your traumatic brain injured child being kept in four-point hand-and-leg restraints for four continuous weeks because that is the best the Cottage Health Care System would do for your blind child, who is extremely agitated because of a brain injury. How would you feel, as a parent, seeing your child look like he is being denied basic human rights like walking to the bathroom, or taking a shower, for one whole month because he is in restraints? Feel the suffering heaped upon suffering? When I expressed concerns or protested, I repeatedly was told: “You can take your son home anytime you like.” Nicholas said he was told: “Your parents don’t want you.”
Take him home? We already tried that. Home is not the proper placement for him right now. If the hospital has him with 24-hour, one-on-one supervision and it takes three security guards, physical hand-and-leg restraints, Haldol shots, and other psychotropic medications to contain him, then how is it medically sound to recommend he return home? How would his 5’2’’ mother contain him all by herself? It doesn’t make sense.
We begged for him to be sent back to the Rehab Institute to no avail. But after five weeks at Cottage Hospital, a way was found to get Nicholas another placement: Santa Barbara County Jail.
The hospital did not call to tell us they had sent him to jail; we found out through the grapevine. This victim of traumatic brain injury had been arrested on two misdemeanor charges and carted off. The hospital sent him away without his anti-seizure and psychotropic medication orders.
Because he said he wanted to die and go to heaven, the jail put Nicholas in a safety cell, where he lay pitifully naked. He was suicidal. He has been suicidal for months. No one seems to get his despair.
What does Nicholas need? He needs a fair shake at legitimate rehabilitation. Thank God there have been many outstanding, caring people involved with Nicholas all these months. However, it is unfortunate the system is not set up to care adequately for the traumatic brain injured. I think with all the traumatic brain injured people returning from the war we will be hearing a lot more about this.
Nicholas said to his aunt, “I feel like a piece of trash nobody wants to pick up.” He needs to be in a program with compassion and heart, where people truly and consistently care about his well-being. He needs a place where he can learn independent living skills and how to maneuver with his loss of vision. “It’s been a long time since I have seen blue sky, Mom,” Nicholas said to me recently.
Placement has been a huge issue. We are at a loss as to what to do. We have combed the nation to find a suitable placement. One facility, in Bakersfield, which would specialize in addressing the behavioral components of Nicholas’s traumatic brain injury rehabilitation, costs $157,000 for three months. We have opened up the Nicholas Cavalier Rehabilitation Fund at Santa Barbara Bank & Trust in order to begin raising money for this treatment.
What does Nicholas need? I say he needs a miracle.