Authors: Kevin Malarkey; Alex Malarkey
Kevin Malarkey
We began to learn how to feed Alex, give him medication, clean him, and monitor the equipment and everything else necessary to get our son through each day. The “final exam” was for each of us to handle all of Alex’s care for a twenty-four-hour period, including pulling an all-nighter. Someone mishandled the paperwork, so I actually got to do that drill twice. I didn’t mind.
Alex finally left the ICU for a new room in the rehab unit. The plan, as we learned in our first meeting, was to keep him there for about one month. After all, he wasn’t a true rehab patient, so he couldn’t benefit from the services there. Beth and I had a month to become skilled at caring for all of Alex’s needs, after which he would be discharged from the hospital.
But I had different plans.
I looked around and saw all the exercise equipment and the trained therapists. I could visualize Alex benefiting from the whole environment. As I told our followers on PrayforAlex.com, I wanted Alex to wake up and take advantage of all that was there for him in rehab. He wouldn’t need to be fully conscious, just sufficiently aware to meet the threshold requirements of response.
This was a true crisis moment. The doctors had no further expectations for Alex’s recovery, but we did—and we wanted to keep him in that place that would most help him on the long road to recovery. The hospital had done its duty, we had done all that we could do, and now it was time for Alex to show up. It was up to Alex—which meant, of course, that it was up to God.
I prayed,
Lord, wake Alex up! Touch his brain stem today and send him back to us, because this is his chance to begin getting better. This is the place to get the tools he needs.
I really believed, too. I felt in my spirit that a change was coming very soon. Already Alex was beginning ever so slightly to track activity in the room with his eyes. His condition was stable, and his meds were manageable. He seemed to be sleeping better in the rehab unit, and we believed he was on the verge of being ready to “power heal.”
Beth and I tried to keep seeing the forest and not just the trees. That is, we knew that the big picture was all about God’s doing something that couldn’t be explained by human means. We were ready to care for our boy in a permanent coma if it came to that, but we didn’t believe this was how the story would end. So we asked all our friends and the outstanding Alex’s Army to join us in petitioning the Lord. We pleaded with Him to intervene once more in our son’s medical condition. Our long-term goal was to have Alex at home with us, where he belonged. A date was set, and we called on our army of prayer warriors once again.
There was a certain amount of skepticism floating around concerning this strategy. Some felt that caring for him at home would never work. One nurse, for example, told us, “I can take care of him in a hospital like this one, but I don’t think I could handle it in a house.” She and others believed that a nursing home was the answer. Nursing homes are viable solutions for others—but we wanted our son to be in his own bed, under our roof. We couldn’t imagine any other outcome.
We knew things would be difficult, and we believed we were ready for that reality.
Breakthrough
One morning the phone rang, and that cheerful voice I knew so well greeted me.
“Kevin!” It was my dad.
“Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
“Kevin, he’s on his way back! He’s on his way back!”
“What do you mean?”
“I went to see Alex this morning, and he followed my wedding ring with his eyes—he was
tracking
!”
My heart beat wildly, and I wasted no time in getting to the hospital. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard hopeful observations about Alex—people tended to see, or think they saw, facial expressions. Some were certain he had moved a hand or a toe. There are times when we’re so eager, we see what we want to see.
But these words were coming from my dad, Dr. William Malarkey, distinguished physician. He knew what to look for, and he didn’t deal in manufactured hope. He had never once made such a declaration. His excitement got me excited.
I still think of January 8 as the day my son emerged from his coma, but it wasn’t that cut-and-dried. He didn’t wake up suddenly, as if from a nap. He’d been gone for nearly two months. He had disappeared from us in an instant, but his return to the Alex we knew would take much longer, given the damage to his spine and his head. The doctors were very skeptical about any future abilities he might have, or even his ability to think. But from this day onward, our Alex began his long journey home. It was as if the light of his mind was being turned on with a slow dimmer switch. Every day brought Alex another step back into our world.
I was ready to celebrate when the hospital agreed to admit Alex to rehab. My prayer had been answered, and it didn’t matter how unlikely it might have seemed to others—God had come through. Now Alex could begin to work with the rehab assistants, and that would make all the difference. I felt that I knew how much strength and determination was inside Alex, and again I was certain that rehab was going to be a smashing success. The rehab doctors were now in charge, but we considered the Great Physician to be the one with the ultimate prognosis.
Alex’s Army rejoiced with us as we shared all these new developments with our community at PrayforAlex.com. And the Army kept praying.
Slaphappy
Even with the thrilling signs that Alex was coming back, he was still in a thick fog. Some days it seemed he was charging ahead; other days made us feel we had lost ground. We tried absolutely everything we could think of to shine our light through that fog and guide him home. Everyone who came into the room had his or her own little act to spark Alex’s awareness. People told jokes, made funny faces, made body noises (real and simulated), and even lightly tickled a body that we were assured had no feeling.
Where are you, Alex?
We prayed, we spoke positively, and we truly believed . . . most of the time. When my moments of doubt emerged, I carefully hid them. No one could really measure the impact of the severe damage to his brain and spinal cord. Mental, physical, and emotional functioning might be intact—medically speaking—or it might be destroyed forever. We simply couldn’t know.
When I thought about that, fear gripped me. It wasn’t about paralysis or his breathing on a ventilator. I could handle any of that. What terrified me was the idea of never getting my son back. I had moments when I would have paid any conceivable price just to talk to my Alex. So I kept up my one-sided conversations, just as if we were having the talks we’d always had. Everyone else made funny faces, performed silly dances, and tried any wild strategy to pull him out of the mist. At this point, nothing looked unusual in that room—people had tried everything but standing on their heads.
Maybe brothers close in age are the ones who know best how to make each other laugh. It was Aaron who finally made it happen.
Aaron came up with his own idea about how to spark Alex’s attention. Aaron put his face near Alex’s and then gave his own face a hard
smack!
Aaron then repeatedly smacked his own face. Something about Aaron’s monkey business got through, and after a few more slaps, a genuine smile broke out across Alex’s face. I’d never seen anything so beautiful, even if it took Aaron slapping himself to bring it on. Aaron kept slapping his cheeks, and Alex’s smile kept growing. This was no muscular reflex—it was a
grin
. Everyone present could see it, and the whole room let out a spontaneous victory cheer. Aaron was very pleased with his success and redoubled his efforts, slapping himself even more vigorously. I then stepped in and prevented Aaron from doing further damage to his handsome face. He’d done a great job, and it was time to give his facial tissue a break!
From this point onward, Alex never completely vanished back into the fog. He had an awareness of the room and the people in it, and he clearly knew when we were talking to him.
I wrote a poem at the time to express the power of God we felt was at work in Alex:
Going to Work
Now the rehab therapists had something to work with, and they began interacting with Alex in various ways.
“Alex,” the speech therapist asked, “can you tell me how old you are?”
We all watched with great anticipation, but I had an extra level of intensity waiting for his reply. By this point, my one obsession was to ask Alex to forgive me for what I had done. The moment I desired more than any other was within reach. But then smiles began to fade as we looked from Alex to the therapist. Alex only stared ahead.
“Alex,” continued the therapist, “do you know how old you are? What is your age?”
Alex didn’t respond. The more the therapist questioned him, the more a confused expression etched its way across his brow. My eyes darted between Alex and the therapist. What could all this mean? Discreetly we were summoned out of the room, and the therapist offered her thoughts.
“We want to be careful about broad pronouncements in cases like these, but we also want to be realistic about where we are. The reality of this situation may be not only that Alex didn’t respond—that he didn’t know the answer to the question—but that he
can’t
respond.”
Can’t respond?
my mind screamed in fear.
No!
Up to this point, there was never a doubt in my mind that Alex would come back and be our Alex. I had never anticipated the idea, even for a moment, that Alex might have severe brain damage. Of course Alex would come back and we could have that one conversation I had agonized over a thousand times—the one question I so desperately longed to ask: “Alex, would you please forgive me?”
For the first time, I came face-to-face with the prospect that I might never have the chance to receive his forgiveness—that Alex might have slipped away from us forever. Reeling from this new possibility, my body sank back into the chair, visibly defeated. But the chair could not stop my mind’s cascading into a black abyss—my lowest point since this nightmare began.
It was this day, of all that followed the accident, that I gave in to my deepest fears. I embraced the apparent failure of the moment and allowed it to define the future. In so doing, I allowed myself to become devastated. With this latest report from the therapist, everything had taken on a darkened hue. I cried as much that day as I had on the day of the accident. Alex couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe on his own, couldn’t speak, and couldn’t swallow. If he couldn’t think and understand, then in what sense was he really Alex?
Where had my faith gone? Why did I embrace doubt after so many victories? I guess I am a lot like Peter when Jesus told him to get out of the boat and walk on water, confident in Jesus one moment and focused on the waves—and sinking—the next. But even though I was giving the Giant Despair a temporary free pass in my mind, no one was giving up, including me.
The therapists were wonderful, soldiering on despite these setbacks. The speech therapist was particularly tenacious and gave me a lot of encouragement. Not too long after the negative news, she helped Alex develop three facial movements that gave us true hope. He could move the corner of his mouth on the right side of his face. We were able to establish with him that this expression meant the word
yes
. Puckered lips, we agreed with Alex, meant the word
no
. Alex’s all-time favorite expression, however, was rolling his eyes, which took on a variety of meanings, depending on context. For example:
I don’t know.
Your questions are bugging me.
My dad is a nut job.
And just about anything else from the massive realm of possibilities between yes and no.
Mirror Motivation