My Best Friend Died, and I Didn't Even Know About It Until Days Later...Tell People You Love Them Before It's Too Late.

The past few weeks have been a hard reminder of how important it is to always tell the people you care about, how much you love and appreciate them. I was recently slapped in the face with this revelation that my best friend had died during some surgical complications, and the whole thing just shook me to my core. This is the story of how my best friend died, and the nightmare that was all of the medical procedures that he had to go through.

I guess I should start from the beginning now. My best friend TJ recently had to undergo a complex surgery procedure for his jaw to correct his underbite. They put two plates and screws on the left and right side of his upper jaw, and one set on his lower jaw. They had to reset his jaw so that all his teeth would touch. The surgery went fine, but he was in extreme agony for the first few hours afterwards because they had to keep tubes going down his nostril and his throat so that they could drain excess blood from his stomach and his facial wounds. He couldn't swallow or breathe properly with them, so he begged them to remove the tubes.

When they finally did remove the tubes, however, an hour or so later he started puking up a bunch of blood and stomach acid. A bit later, his nurse in the ICU noticed that his eye was swollen shut and then saw that his pupil was severely dilated. Realizing that it was a definite cause for concern, she called an ambulance and they wheeled TJ away to another hospital to get checked.

At the new hospital, he was brought directly into another ICU ward and a neurosurgeon came and ordered an MRI for him to determine what was causing his eye to stay swollen shut like that. The MRI revealed that he apparently had suffered a subdural hematoma, bleeding in his brain. In spite of this discovery, they told him that he would be ok to go home in a few days because they thought it would eventually subside and the swelling would go away after the bleeding stopped.

He was eventually sent home a few days later, and everything seemed normal, but apparently TJ knew that something was still way off. He was experiencing this constant "whooshing" sound on the side of his head and his eye started to swell even more, causing him even more pain from the pressure in that area. After a few days, he had a follow-up appointment with his surgeon, who told him that it seemed to be getting worse, so he directed him to yet another medical facility, which specialized in eye-related things.

Upon getting checked out at the eye center, they were very adamant that he needed to get admitted immediately to the University of Utah Neuroscience hospital, because his eye was apparently sticking out 3 cm further than his other eye. When he got to the U, he had to undergo another MRI as well as a CAT scan so that they could get to the bottom of what was causing the swelling and the pain in his eye. They eventually came to the conclusion that he had what was called a carotid cavernous fistula in his carotid artery.

This is where his pain and suffering was multiplied tenfold, however. To really find out what was going on, they had to perform an angiogram on him, which consisted of them making an incision on the inner side of his right thigh and pushing a tube with a camera up the artery all the way up to his head. This was an agonizing procedure for TJ, because they could not administer general anesthesia to him since it wasn't an actual operation. Yes, he was basically wide awake for the whole thing. Every excruciating second of feeling a foreign object being shoved all the way through his body...

They eventually were able to determine that there was a tear in his carotid artery and blood from it was flowing into another blood vessel that was close to it, which was causing the whooshing sound in his head. They said that the only way to fix it was to go back in and seal it, which they did the next day. This time, thankfully, they did put him under for the procedure. No one could have possibly anticipated what happened next.

Shortly after the procedure, while TJ was still in the ICU, he was talking to one of the nurses, when suddenly, he started feeling really weak and everything started to get really bright. Apparently, he was having a stroke, and that caused his leg artery to burst open. Blood was squirting everywhere and doctors were rushing into the room. That was when it happened.

That was when my best friend died. They couldn't save him before his body gave out...

...but they continued to work their asses off to save/revive him, and they did not stop until they had accomplished their mission. TJ eventually regained consciousness, and he was informed that he had been dead for a whole 8 minutes and 14 seconds. To bring him back, they had to give him 4 liters of blood and they had to perform another angiogram on him to make their earlier procedure more operable.

Eventually, after about a week or so of being fed different drug after different drug, he started to feel somewhat normal again, until they had to inject him with blood thinners, and that's when he noticed his strength starting to decline once more. They ran more blood tests on him and told him that everything looked like he was fine to go home.

Despite getting the go-ahead to go home, TJ knew that something was still wrong. He was having a really hard time standing up and he would get really dizzy and lightheaded, which made something even as simple as using the restroom an extremely difficult task. He said that it was like he was about to lose consciousness every time.

Sure enough, over the short period of time that he was home, he was having complications with using the restroom and would come very close to losing consciousness, so they contacted one of the nurses to inform her of what was going on, and she had an ambulance come pick him up immediately. They tried to give him an IV, but his blood pressure was so low that they ended up sticking him like 10 times before they decided that their efforts were futile. They brought him to another facility, where they put more blood into him and carried out another MRI to try to figure out what was going on.

Eventually, they life flighted him back to the U, and he met up with the neurosurgery team from before. They ended up having to cut his other thigh open so that they could put a line in to get him blood transfusion quicker, and then they told him that the GI unit would be by to give him an endoscopy. Another tube down his throat, and they discovered two ulcers that were constantly leaking blood into his GI tract. They kept him in the hospital for 4 more days to monitor his condition before they finally cleared him to go home.

After he got home he shared his insane story with me, and that's when I found out that he had died for a whole 8 minutes and 14 seconds. That revelation really messed me up because during this whole thing I was really worried about how he was doing, and I wanted to visit him in the hospital, but I ended up not being able to. I know that TJ was also really nervous about the whole surgery, more so than I was, obviously.

My best friend died, and to this day I still can't believe it. If those doctors hadn't fought their hardest to bring him back to life, this story would be ending on a much sadder note. I can't even begin to imagine how I would be coping if that had been the case. Thankfully, TJ is alive and well today and is in full recovery mode in the comfort of his own home. I can't wait for him to fully recover so that we can resume our many raving adventures together!

This whole ordeal has been a very sobering reminder for me, that I really need to be telling the people that I love, how much I love them and appreciate their presence in my life. Life is too short and too unpredictable. You never know who will still be around tomorrow. You never know when Life has other plans for people. You never know when the Grim Reaper will decide to fill his quota with someone you love. So while they are still around, TELL THEM. Make sure that they know beyond a shadow of a doubt how much you love and care for them.

One of the biggest regrets that I hear from people who have lost someone, is that they didn't put enough effort into making sure that their loved one knew that they were loved, etc. Don't be one of those people. Go out into the world and tell your friends how much you love them. But more than that, tell them WHY you love them. Just make sure that they know. It's important.

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Check out some of my other posts!

Six Sites You Need to Know About as a New Steemian
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How to Use Tags to Maximize Visibility for Your Posts and Gain More Upvotes
How The Minnow Support Project Helps You Achieve Your Dreams on Steemit
How I Achieved 200 Followers in My First Month on Steemit
Why I Chose to Invest $100 in Steem
How To Set Up Your Steemit Profile
The Dawn of The Dancing Dreamers
The Dawn of Friendship In a New Age
I'm Just an Island Boy Living in Utah who Loves EDM

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