Please help with Medical expenses for Anthony West
THE STORY OF ANTHONY
Fingers clutching the sheets
So tight I cannot pry them apart
Wrists locked at 90 degrees
Arms and legs extended rigid
Fists crossed in front of him
Face bright red
Sweat pouring from his body
Arms and legs trembling at high speeds
Left eye wide open (right eye partly swollen)
and wildly searching for relief, rolling from left to
right and back again, in FEAR
For twenty minutes, we watched him writhing, twisting, panicking while doctors and nurses scrambled, trying to figure out how to calm him. This is STORMING: Paroxysmal Sympathetic Hyperactivity; a clear sign of a severe traumatic brain injury.
On the 18th day after the event, he is drugged with a cocktail of painkillers, sedatives, and anti-anxiety meds. He is still in a coma and has been ever since he arrived here at St. John’s Hospital in Tulsa. He has wires and tubes going everywhere and his arms look like pincushions from needle pricks. 
This is Anthony, who less than a month ago was preparing to go from computer consulting to data analyst. He had worked hard to earn an honors degree at the University of Tulsa with three majors. He played basketball, soccer, tennis, hiked and skied the mountains. He had so much life in him and was so kind and gentle that most people who knew him loved him. He had an extremely bright and promising future ahead of him, and, up until the beginning of Dec, he had a long, productive, prosperous life in front of him.
Early on the evening of Dec 5th, a drunk driver, running from another accident, going 75 mph, hit the car in which Anthony was riding. The force of the impact caused severe brain trauma and left him unconscious, in a coma. Now, all that he was is hidden behind his injuries and is at risk of being lost. For him to be able to recover to the fullest extent possible, it is imperative that he receive the best medical care possible. Other injuries can be fixed and healed within a few months, but brain injuries are the worst of all. They are devastating, life-changing and require the most time and best medical care to heal.
Insurance is limited and will ultimately fall far short of covering all the expenses for the kind of care required to restore as much as he can be. Therefore, we are asking for your help with his situation.
A monetary donation by each person receiving this plea would go a long way toward making it possible for him to go to one of the top-rated coma stimulation and brain restoration hospitals in the country. Your contribution will help us to cover additional medical costs at a succession of facilities with a gradation of treatment and for continued therapies for an extended time. It would also partly go towards helping to cover transportation expenses (e.g., air medical taxi) for him and for us so that we can participate in his therapies.
If you would like to follow his story, you can do so on his CaringBridge journal:
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/anthonywest/journal
Please help if you can, and please pray.
