3AM June 10th 2007 -- Our lives were forever changed. The phone rang, and the person at the other end told my husband that our 26-year-old son, Michael, had been in a car crash and was in the hospital. My husband asked what his condition was, and was told that we needed to get there ASAP. We threw on clothes and got in the car, he, our daughter, and me... driving as fast as we safely could, to the hospital, which seemed like it took forever to reach.
When we got there, we saw Michael's roommate, Adam, whose jeans were covered with blood, from his waist to his knees. He walked towards us, so we knew it wasn't Adam's blood.
He, Michael, Adam's date Trisha, and a co-worker of Michael's had gone to an all day concert in the SF Bay Area on June 9th. They left the concert at about 10:30 p.m., to make the three hour drive home. About two hrs into the trip, Michael, who was driving his brand new car, pulled into a rest area and told his friends he was going to take a nap because he was too tired to drive. Adam told him he was fine to drive, he'd been sleeping for two hours... so Michael gave him the keys and got comfy in the front passenger seat. About an hour later, just two exits from home, Adam fell asleep at the wheel, with the cruise control set at 75, and the car careened off the highway into a bunch of oak trees. Trisha was killed on impact, and Michael suffered numerous physical and brain injuries. Adam and Michael's coworker suffered minor injuries, and required no hospitalization.
When we finally got to see a doctor, he listed all of Michael's broken bones -- his right knee, right femur, right forearm, jaw, facial fractures... And then he told us that Michael had suffered diffuse axonal brain injuries (each hemisphere of the brain had shifted independently, severing many connections), and also five massive brain traumas... any one of which could kill him...