I would like to tell everyone that Wayne is doing well. 2 1/2 years after his accident he is now back to work driving a fork truck in a grocery warehouse. He went back to the same job he had so he didn't have too much difficulty. When he has to do a new job it takes him longer to catch on. We have a wonderful supportive family - his brothers help us with things he used to do but can't - like going on the roof to fix shingles etc. - and his daughters & I take good care of him. He put a lot of hard work and effort into getting better, and lots of prayers! God has been with us every step of the way. I hope his recovery will encourage everyone to work hard and pray and believe so they can recover as much as they can! We love him, differences and all!
Original Story
Oct. 21, 1998, my hubby, Wayne Jaruzel was cutting down a tree. It went where it was supposed to go, but a large branch came out of it and came down on him. He got knocked down. The man working with him was at the edge of the woods, heard the tree go down, and went back with the skidder, a large tractor-like machine, to pull the tree out. He could not find Wayne when he got to the tree, & after a few minutes found him crawling around on the ground, incoherent & bleeding from his left ear. He called for help on his two-way radio, and the people at the other end called an ambulance and me at home. I went to the woods immediately. I found him with the man that found him, grunting respirations and thrashing about. I talked to him & tried to keep him calm.He did calm down a bit if I kept talking, & this helped keep him still until the ambulance got there. Wayne was strapped to a backboard, put in the back of a pick-up truck, & hauled up a steep hill to the ambulance. I went with him to the hospital in the ambulance. After we arrived, we found out he had fractured the temporal bone on the left side of his skull top to bottom, and the pressure inside the skull was 6 times the normal pressure. He also broke his left shoulder and 5 ribs, causing a punctured lung. He had bleeding on the right side of his brain & was taken to surgery right away. The neurosurgeon told us that if the pressure was still as high in the morning, he would have to pronounce him. The pressure came down to the high 30's (still three times the normal) by morning. He stayed in the coma for two long months. He developed pneumonia three times, a severe staph infection, blood clots in his left leg and had to be put on heparin. The heparin caused the surgical site on the right side of the brain to rebleed, and he had to go back for brain surgery at Thanksgiving time. After this he was paralyzed on his left side. He was gradually weaned off the ventilator. He finally "woke up" from his coma on Dec. 19, just before Christmas, 1998. The ICU nurses had almost given up that he would wake in time for Christmas. He opened his eyes and smiled at me, and later at our daughters. He made it out of ICU to the Rehab unit just in time for New Years, 1999! He was discharged from the hospital on Feb. 9th. Wayne has worked hard while in outpatient Rehab. and is doing well. He found out after discharge that he also got a ruptured disc in his lower back at the time of the injury, and this causes his right foot to be very weak. He got full function back of his left arm and leg though, and walks quite well with a brace on the right foot. His neurosurgeon said his recovery is a miracle. We hope he can return to his job as a fork-truck driver at a local warehouse in Jan. or Feb. 2000. He has passed his driving test, and learned to cope with a little loss of vision in his left eye. He had a seizure in July 1999, and will continue taking the antiseizure medication, but this is a small price to pay to keep driving.
