Editor’s Note: March is Brain Health Awareness and one of our regular contributors, Noah Washington, wanted to share his personal story of brain surgery and recorvery.
Little did I know that the day I came into this world would also mark the day I teetered on the brink of death. It happened a mere 15 years apart.
In the early morning of September 27, my 15th birthday, I was rushed to the emergency room in Richmond, Virginia. I remember going in and out of consciousness, not understanding what was happening. First, I recalled lying in a roller bed pushed through Bon Secours, St. Mary’s Hospital in Richmond. Then, I remembered seeing my half-sister’s mother, Dr. Pamela Stubbs, a BSN, look at me wonderfully after she recognized me being loaded into an ambulance departing for the Medical Center of Virginia (MCV) emergency medical unit.
My mother, Lynne Washington, 63, recounted her experience. “I heard this noise in the bathroom at night, and it was like something was struggling, like something had fallen. And then something was struggling. So I got out of bed and went to the bathroom,” said Washington. My mother’s nightmare began when she walked into that bathroom, “I saw my child scrambling on the floor on his back, going back and forth, his head moving, and his arms and legs all moving in different directions,” Washington continued. From there, she woke my father, Larry, 73, both were gripped by fear and confusion. Not knowing what to do, they stabilized me while I was pleading with a pounding headache. Acting as quickly as they could, they transported me to the nearest hospital, only to be swiftly redirected to an MCV emergency medical unit, which was better equipped to handle what was happening.
Upon arriving at the hospital and after a CT scan, my parents were told that Bacterial Meningitis was in my brain. Meningitis is an infection that causes inflammation of the three thin layers of tissue, known as meninges, which cover the brain and spinal cord. Meningitis may be caused by a virus or bacteria, which hypothesized that I must have drank tainted water.
In a grim exchange with the attending neurosurgeon, my parents were presented with three options:
- They could drill into the brain and try to drain the meningitis out.
- They could scrape the skull of the infection.
- The third option, the riskiest option, was that they’d have to take the skull out and they would deep clean the skull. This would require separating it for one year, and I would have had to wear a helmet.
Childrenshospital.org cites that bacterial meningitis may cause permanent damage, including hearing loss, mental retardation, or even death. Approximately 3,000 people in the U.S., or one in 100,000, are diagnosed with bacterial meningitis each year.
Each of these options to my parents was more dire than the last, “It’s tough as a mother to see this and to see your child suffer. There were moments when he couldn’t move parts of his body. If I could have taken his place, I surely would have in a heartbeat,” Washington said. After proceeding with option 2, I was put into recovery. But the situation only got worse during the time of healing. A second surgery would have to be performed after a follow-up brain scan after I suffered from a post-operation seizure. In that scan, it was revealed that they were not able to clear all of the meningitis out of my brain. This was when option three was put into action, “They went back for a second surgery on the brain, which we knew that the danger of operating on him could have killed him,” said Washington.
As hard as it was on my parents, my mom said it was even harder on my twin brother, John. “Having his twin brother there was hard. It made it even worse because his brother had a tough time coping. To see his brother in that kind of pain was emotionally taxing on him. It was taxing on all of us,” Washington continued.
To this day, my brother, John, will periodically text or call me in the early morning or late at night to see that I am okay. “When Noah got sick, it was our first year of high school. A year that should be filled with memories of navigating high school, talking about colleges, and figuring out crushes. But, for me, it was a year of constant anxiety and trying to act calm while in class,” John Washington said.
From there, I stayed in the ICU for a month. I couldn’t go home; I could only go outside accompanied by someone. It was a miserable experience. I remember crying at night, my Dad doing his best to calm me down. As sad as that was, it was during this moment that I found out what my capacity for love was.
My sister, Amanda Washington-Lockett, 37, was attending Columbia University, getting her master’s in higher education. Still, upon hearing the news, she immediately traveled from New York to Richmond. “I do remember feeling just kind of like an overwhelming sense of helplessness, not knowing how to help you,” Washington-Lockett said. Darryl Lockett, her boyfriend at the time and now husband, agreed to meet her halfway in Washington D.C (where he was working during that time). “We didn’t want you to think there was anything that you could not do. If there was a challenge or a unique circumstance that you would have to accept as a reality, we wanted to impress upon you that you were still the coolest 15-year-old there was, even amid your rehabilitation,” said Lockett.
Near the end of my hospital stay, I would enter rehab. During the worst of my illness, I was completely paralyzed on my left side. For a while, I couldn’t move that side entirely. Only within the last five years have I been able to raise my left eyebrow. But while in rehab, I learned the valuable lesson that some people genuinely have it worse than you. I loved the local Chinese restaurant that was around the corner from my home on Mechanicsville Turnpike, but being on a strict diet while in the hospital, I could only get Chinese food while in rehab. It was a joy to eat something that was not hospital food, but I could only eat so much because my stomach wasn’t what it was before.
After leaving the hospital, I was homebound and could not attend school in public. Even when out in public, I had to wear a helmet that looked like a vintage football helmet, in fear of when I was walking that I would be without half of my skull to protect my brain, which could land me back in the hospital, and that was the last place I wanted to be at that point.
During the day, I would complete speech therapy and more extensive physical therapy. My teacher, Pamela Yates, was a godsend. She had the patience of an angel while I stuttered and stammered through her lessons. She would drive to my house every day at 4pm, after her regular day teaching at what would have been my regularly attended school, Atlee High School. For the most part, I was still operational and could receive information. But my skills in math and science had decayed.
As I look back at that time, I am grateful. My parents, who were working full-time, left my care to my grandmother, Margaret. From October to July, it was her and I every day. She would take me back and forth from therapy to home. I even remember listening to Stevie Wonder and Frank Sinatra and watching the AMC hit series Mad Men with her. All of these things would influence my taste as an adult. I remember walking to her room at the back of my suburban house at the end of the day, wishing her a good night and having that be my favorite time of day, as hanging out with her made those miserable days worth it. At the end of that time, after I had my third brain surgery, my skull was placed back in, and I was on the road to recovery; she moved back to Ohio, where she would stay for the following year before passing away on February 2, 2015 after a short battle with cancer.
I’m grateful for that time because I had uninterrupted access to the person I loved most in the world.