Before I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, I wanted to be a marine biologist.
In fact, I was signed up for college classes to do so in the fall of 1982. Then my life suddenly changed. I lived with my grandparents in Florida at the time.
Early one morning that summer, my mom called me frantic and said that my older brother Eric had been in a horrible car accident, had emergency brain surgery overnight, and he wasn’t expected to live.
She said that I needed to come home immediately. I left that same afternoon for Toledo, my first time ever on a plane. I was scared to death. I had just seen my brother a few months ago, and he was a normal person. What was he going to be like now?
Once I arrived, I went straight to the hospital. My brother was in the ICU. My first sight of him was horrific.
He was lying half naked on a hospital bed. His head was wrapped with a white gauze bandage spotted with blood. His face was bruised and his eyes completely swollen shut. There was a metal tube coming out of his head, tubes in his nose and mouth, and tubes coming out of both sides of his chest.
He didn’t look like my brother Eric anymore.
We waited as a family all hours of the day and night for the neurosurgeon to come around to give us an update. Most days he would come by for a few minutes and give us an update.
For the most part, he would tell us that they were doing everything possible, but it was still likely that Eric would die.
As we sat there day after day over a two-week period, I became interested in Neurosurgery.
Just being in that environment of “Life and Death”, I knew that there was more to be done for people like my brother, and I wanted to be part of it.
After those horrible two weeks, I flew back to Florida, dropped out of my marine biology classes, and moved back home to start college with the intent of becoming a neurosurgeon.
My determination never wavered from there - and after 15 years of schooling and training after high school, I became a neurosurgeon.
As for my brother Eric, he survived but was in a coma for the next 6 months. Once awake, he could never walk or talk again.
He required constant care for the rest of his life, and my mother, grandmother, and my dad devoted the rest of their lives to care for him.
I learned from my brother’s injury that saving someone’s life isn’t just about keeping them alive. There must be quality of life considerations as well.
My brother Eric had no true quality of life after his accident and relied completely on others for his survival. That dependence weighed greatly on my mom and dad the rest of their lives.
In addition, it was quite apparent how Eric’s tragedy not only destroyed his life but also consumed the remaining life of my mom, dad, and grandmother.
With the experience of my brother and throughout my career, I have come to realize that there are worse things in life than dying, and not every person should be saved for the sake of saving. These may sound like harsh words, but they are true.
So often in life, you have to actually live through something to totally understand it and for it to make sense. I have used this life experience to have tough conversations when it comes to families trying to decide what to do with a loved one’s care.
Brian Hoeflinger, MD
