On July 27th, our whole world came crashing down in the blink of an eye. Our oldest son, Cameron, was involved in a horrific motorcycle accident. It wasn’t any fault of his own; a car not paying attention pulled out in front of him. Cameron did everything in his power to avoid the wreck; the car just never checked up and never hit the brakes. Cameron t-boned the car on the driver's side and flew about 30 yards from the accident, landing face down in the oncoming traffic lane. Luckily, nothing was coming. Arriving at the hospital, he suffered a broken left femur, a broken left humerus, and broken C1 and C2 vertebrae in his neck. He was awake and alert. Cameron was talking to us, cracking jokes, and being his normal self. He was in stable condition, so we had to push surgery off till Monday afternoon, which was fine. He was in pain, but it was being managed with meds. He went back for surgery; everything was fine. It was supposed to be a routine surgery to fix his arm and his leg, or so we thought… Cam had to have a rod placed from his hip to his knee and a plate and screws in his arm. It was a lengthy surgery, about 5 hours long. Tuesday morning, Cam still hadn’t woken up from surgery. The doctors thought maybe Cam was a little sensitive to the anesthesia. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. When Cam broke those long bones in his body, bone marrow leaked out into his bloodstream (super rare side effect when young people break long bones; Cameron is now the 3rd case they have seen, so really rare). The fat from the bone marrow went straight to his brain and settled there. The fat cells sitting in his brain can mimic the symptoms of a stroke or, in Cam’s case, many strokes all over his brain. So by Tuesday, we had to have him intubated and put on a ventilator because Cam’s brain couldn’t process much, so he couldn’t protect his airway, and fluid was getting in his lungs. At this point, it is a waiting game. We have to give his body time to absorb those fat cells and let his brain heal. We have no timeline of when that will be or what rehabilitation will look like. We have since been able to get him off the ventilator in hopes that things continue to progress because we definitely don’t want to revert, which is still a possibility. Ultimately, we have no answers. We don’t know when, we don’t know how, and there are a lot of what-ifs. We have now been here for 11 days and nights with no end date in sight. We have used all of our vacation time and sick leave and are out of options. We have to be here with Cameron, but life doesn’t pause when trauma hits. If you could find it in your heart to help, we would greatly appreciate any and all donations, and if you can’t, we understand. We just ask everyone to please share our story as we navigate this hard unknown.
Organizer
Christal Brummett
Organizer
Springfield, TN