Payne’s Story: Teenager Survives Traumatic Brain Injury

Payne had started going to a different church with his high school friends than we go to. So on Sunday morning, January 19, Mark is lifting weights in the basement, I’m just getting out of the shower ‘cause we’re getting ready to go to our church service, while Payne had left the house about 15 minutes earlier to go to a different church with his friends from high school. And that morning got interrupted by a phone call that every parent dreads.

He’d been in a low speed car accident and thankfully the Sugarcreek Township folks brought him to our hospital where we are fully set up to do acute neurosurgical intervention as well as very high level of neuro critical care. I think the fact that he ended up here initially, definitely impacted his survival and his outcome.

He had his seatbelt on and his airbag deployed, he wasn’t really going that fast. It was just really dumb luck, I guess, that he hit his head on the side window.

And the initial concerns that were relayed to me, was that due to the magnitude of the insult to his brain, his prognosis for survival and for a positive outcome, positive functional outcome was pretty dim.

The worst part was walking in and seeing his letter jacket, cut up on the floor in a bag with blood all over it. His clothes, that was the first thing I saw and I looked at him hooked up to a million machines.  It was gut wrenching at that point.

When I saw him, it was a 17-year-old kid that was physiologically normal, healthy, an athlete, and young and I thought to myself that, of folks that have traumatic brain injuries, even severe ones, if someone is going to have a good outcome, it would be this kid. That being said, I honestly thought about what if that was my daughter lying in that bed, and how would I want her taken care of. And it was at that point, as a team we made the decision to be much more aggressive in his neurosurgical care.

Living in Dayton, Ohio our whole lives knew that this was a high level trauma center. So I had a friend ask me, “Is he in the right place?  Do we need to move him?  Do we need to get him to another hospital?” I said “NO, this is the best in town.” And so, that makes it easier because I trusted them.

Our whole goal with regards to neuro critical care was to make sure this kid’s brain, the parts that weren’t dead or permanently damaged, survived. So we initiated a protocol where he was maximally sedated, where we used hypertonic saline or concentrated salt water to bring down, bring down his intercrainial pressures, and a lot of tender loving care over the course of his stay until that pressure stabilized as the swelling went down in his brain.

That’s when I realized that our son was going to make it. Now our next question was whether he would ever come out of the coma.  And that, it was probably five days maybe. I think we moved from the ICU to the trauma unit on the 6th day here, or was it 5th day, it was his 5th day here. And so, then we knew he was going to make it but now we didn’t know what he was going to be able to do.

Once we got to the point where his pressures were stable and the swelling went down in his brain we began to slowly remove a lot of the heavy sedation that we had him, had him under. And over a period of days and weeks, he started to wake up and he started to move things and he started to interact with the environment around him.

Dr. Bini, when we showed him what Payne could do with his hands and he was overwhelmed, to a point where there was a tear go down his eye, I think I saw. He said, “I saw his scan, I can’t believe he’s doing this, this quick.”

My hope is to continue, continually get better and then eventually be back to how I was before the accident.

He has not complained one time. About any of this, about any of this and you know, as Janness eluded to earlier, I’m the guy who says “Why’d we let him drive that day? Why didn’t we have a better car for him? Why didn’t we do this, why didn’t we do that?” He’s not one time said that.

I’m looking to go into like some school that has a good engineering program, cause I wanna be like a mechanical engineer, well I don’t know what field of engineering but then possibly to play soccer in college.

This kid was surrounded by people that loved him.

When your child is hurting, you’re gonna stop and do whatever you can to make it better. And that’s what we did, our lives went on hold and it all centered around him for a long time. What can we do to help him get back?

Somewhere deep down inside, this kid knew that he needed to survive. Not just for himself, but for the people that loved him. And I think it makes all the difference in the world.