Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead

by Brian Boyle

  On slower days, Dad lets me set up the truck. It’s an adrenaline rush to operate a machine that costs $500,000. But I must always remain extra careful. So many things can go wrong. Over the years, my dad has personally witnessed many accidents on job sites. On a mediumrise commercial building project in Tysons Corner, Virginia, a guy on the open third floor was using an air compressor to blow away debris. He slipped off the edge and landed on a one-inch-thick iron rod that punctured his stomach. Even though he was in shock, a coworker handed him a cigarette, which he partially smoked, while waiting for the rescue workers to come and saw off the rod before rushing him to the hospital for emergency surgery.

  Another time, my dad was working at Union Station in Washington, D.C., when a coworker was on top of the dome replacing sheet metal. The worker’s safety-restraint belt broke and he slid down fifty feet, with the metal’s sharp jagged ends shredding his body. A two-foot-wide water gutter stopped his fall. He ended up in critical condition.

  On another occasion when my dad was working at a parking garage at Georgetown University, a guy on the second floor was stripping away metal wall forms with a thirty-pound iron-digging bar. The bar slipped through his hands and fell to the lower level where it hit a coworker, smashing his hard hat into pieces and cracking his skull. He was killed instantly.

  The reason he tells me these stories is not to frighten me, but because he wants me to understand just how dangerous the construction industry is. Yet in the thirty-five years that he has worked in this business, he has never had any safety problems or caused any injuries. He has trained thirty pump-truck operators, always telling them that anybody can run a pump truck, but to be a successful operator, you have to be a successful troubleshooter. His stellar safety record verifies that statement many times over.

  When I get home from work, I usually head to the local rec pool. All the construction work has strengthened me. I can swim longer and faster. On some days, I meet Sam at the pool or the gym to lift weights. I continue working with my dad right through the summer. We decide that I should attend St. Mary’s College in the fall. Sam will be my roommate in one of the dorms. We will also be teammates on the swim team. A year ago, all of this would have seemed highly unlikely. No, make that impossible, even insane, to consider college and actually being on the swim team. I still have difficulty wrapping my mind around how I outfoxed death and survived a coma, paralysis, seizures, and infections. I am grateful for each and every day.

  CHAPTER 26

  ST. MARY’S COLLEGE SWIM TEAM

  It’s hard to believe that I am finally here—at St Mary’s. The beautiful campus sits next to the St. Mary’s River. The school was established in 1840 and academic pursuits are a priority here. It’s a small school, with about two thousand students. St. Mary’s City was the fourth outpost of colonization in British North America and was the capital of Maryland until 1695.

  After unloading all my stuff into my room and saying goodbye to my parents, Sam and I check out the college’s new fifty-meter pool. I’m amazed by its sheer size and try to calculate how many gallons of water went into filling it up. I visualize the pool being filled with millions of my teardrops, because that is exactly what it took for me to get here.

  We have a week of classes before our first swim practice. All the guys and the girls on the team are like a small family, which I definitely prefer since I’m incredibly self-conscious walking around with my visible scars. My local rec pool was dimly lit and rarely crowded. However, the lights inside the new St. Mary’s aquatic center are bright. You can see every red and pink scar on my body, which makes me want to walk around with a shirt on, or at least have a towel draped over my shoulders.

  Because I was introduced to the team at a preseason meeting, the other swimmers already know about the accident. But this is the first occasion that they have seen me without a shirt, so the questions begin flying immediately, though not in an uncomfortable way. I keep my answers short and as upbeat as possible, providing a condensed version of the events.

  When it’s time to swim, I go hard and strong with the rest of the sprinters. But after thirty minutes, my body begins shutting down. I try to push through the fatigue and stay focused, but exhaustion wins. I stroke to the side of the pool, feeling cramps in my legs, arms, and neck. A sympathetic and supportive Coach Barbins walks over to see if I’m okay. I say that I just need a quick drink and then I’ll be good.

  I take some sips from my water bottle, then get the drive to continue on through the pain. I kick off the wall triumphantly and achieve a nice rhythm with the other swimmers. I don’t want anyone to think that I’m unable to keep up with the pace, especially on the first day when everyone is checking out one another. The last thing I want is my teammates to feel sorry for me, grant me favors, or think that I’m not good enough to be on the team. But my body can take only so much. After another fifteen minutes, I head to the pool edge and remove my swim cap and goggles. I feel dejected and vulnerable, as if I’ve just let everyone down, especially myself.

  I collect my kickboard, water bottle, and pull buoy and climb out of the pool. I toss the kickboard and pull buoy in the metal bin and walk alone to the locker room with my head down in shame, unwilling to look up at any of the swimmers in the pool.

  It’s time for a serious reality check while I take a shower. The hot water can’t remove the obvious: I was an idiot to think that I could swim at this elite level. Everyone is much faster than me. I can’t even make it through half a practice. This is a big mistake. So why beat myself up over my physical limitations? My teammates weren’t crushed by a truck; they didn’t have their organs shattered and body battered. When I was fighting for my life fourteen months ago, they were able to stay fit and swim whenever they wanted, living healthy normal lives. While I was learning how to walk and take a piss without any help, they were deep in training.

  Yet if I overcame death, why have I become such a defeatist simply because I can’t swim hard for an hour? Now is not the time to quit. If I give up, it’s not because I can’t do it, it’s because I think I can’t do it. I turn off the shower and decide to show up for swim practice tomorrow. I can do this.

  The next day I get back in the pool with the team. I’m doing the best that I can and that’s all I can hope to achieve. I swim hard for forty-five minutes and then get out of the pool. And this is how it goes for the remainder of the first week. I attend classes, do homework, and go to swim practice. It’s a good routine. I call my parents after every practice to give them an update on how everything is going with school and in the pool. They are pleased to hear from me.

  The next week, I speak with Coach Barbins. We decide that I should swim two or three times a week instead of six like everyone else. It’s not that I’m incapable of swimming every day, but there’s a concern that my heart and lungs need the extra days of rest. We want to stay on the prudent side of caution.

  I also decide to move out of the dorm and live at home. I will commute to school instead of staying on campus. I think it’s too early for my parents to be alone after everything we went through over the past year. After spending practically every waking minute with them and experiencing so many hardships together, I find that it’s emotionally hard on them for me to just disappear into college life. My mom tells me that when I’m not around, my dad becomes quiet and mopes around the house like a lost dog.

  On the days when I don’t swim, I lift weights and run on the treadmill to keep up my conditioning. My left shoulder is still not 100 percent; there’s still nerve damage. My lungs haven’t flushed out all the junk and liquid. I can’t jump more than a few inches off the ground because my ankles are weak. This matters in swim races because you need sufficient ankle strength to spring off the starting block and push off the walls.

  With a little over two months of training under our Speedos, we’re ready for our first swim meet with Hood College, which will be held in the new aquatic center. Because Coach Barbins knows how badly I want to swim
in this meet, he gives me the privilege of swimming in the two-hundred-yard medley relay team, which is the first event.

  On November 11, 2005, I walk out into the center with the rest of the St. Mary’s Seahawks swim team. We’re wearing our school colors—navy blue, yellow gold, and white. My parents are watching in the crowded bleachers. The announcer introduces the first race.

  I take off my blue team parka and set it down on a bench. I instantly sense stares from the people in the stands, the timing officials, and especially the opposing team. I hear people whispering, and I know what they’re saying, but my still-visible scars, I realize, are the triumphant symbol of loving life. These scars are my proud battle wounds.

  I put on my goggles and swim cap, then head over to the designated starting blocks with the other swimmers. Sam is a few lanes down from me, swinging his arms to get loose. He sees me and gives a thumbs-up. Each school has two relay teams, and mine is in lane one.

  In the two-hundred-yard medley relay, each swimmer goes two laps. The four events, in order, are backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke, and freestyle. I’m swimming the freestyle, which means that I’m the anchor leg.

  When the race official says, “Judges and timers ready,” my body suddenly grows weak. However, “swimmers take their marks” snaps me back into reality. Then beep!

  As the swimmers blast across the pool, I focus on what I must do. Two of the other relay teams have a lap lead when my breaststroking teammate is about fifteen feet from the wall. He is neck and neck with the swimmer in the adjacent lane. It will be a race for third place.

  I rapidly inhale and exhale several times, trying to remove all the lingering carbon dioxide so only fresh oxygen remains in my lungs.

  Ten feet.

  I swing my arms in a circle for that final stretch and press my goggles tightly against my eyes.

  Five feet.

  I crouch so my hands are near my feet, and my fingers grip the edge of the starting block.

  Three . . . two . . . one, and my teammate’s fingers touches the wall.

  I leap off the block, kicking hard to glide those extra feet underwater. When I surface, I’m churning though the water at full-throttle, maintaining proper form and technique. Before I know it, I’m already doing a flip turn at the wall. The swimmer to my left won’t back down. I really put the steam on, giving everything I have. My lungs are on fire and I refuse to take any more breaths. I dig down deep to block the lactic-acid pain. I elongate my stroke. I’m only a few yards away from the wall when I notice that he’s starting to fall back. But I can’t take the risk of him charging for the wall at the last second. The black line at the pool bottom has changed into a fuzzy dark line as exhaustion overwhelms me. My arms feel heavy, like they’re not joined to my body. I push harder. Several more feet and I’m there. I slam my hand so hard against the wall that a wave of water splashes up out of the pool and drenches the timing official.

  Our relay team takes third. My individual split is around twenty-four seconds, only a second slower than my personal record in high school. I give high fives to my teammates, but they’re wondering why I’m excited about third place. Need I remind them that doctors and physical therapists once thought I would never be able to swim again? To me, third place is as good as gold.

  I run up to the bleachers and give my parents a big old hug. But I have to hurry back down to the pool deck because I have one more event to swim—the individual fifty-yard freestyle.

  I’m back on the starting block. I hear the beep and race through the two laps in roughly the same time as before—twenty-four seconds. It earns a fourth place out of eight swimmers.

  By the end of the fall semester, I’ve raced in three more swim meets. For Christmas, my parents surprise me with the ultimate gift—they are going to build a pool in the backyard. Brian’s Pool is scribbled in blue colored pencil at the bottom of the blueprints. It will be ready by early summer. But during winter break, I get sick again. Excess fluid has built up in my lungs. I come down with bronchitis and early-onset mononucleosis. The most likely culprit for this health setback is a compromised immune system due to swim training; my body’s natural resistance to infections is still low. Regretfully, I’m forced to stop swimming. Instead, I will spend more time lifting weights to build back my strength.

  So while I attend classes at St. Mary’s, I find an athletic outlet with my old love: weight training. It’s certainly not a team sport—just me and the heavy iron. Yet I have no complaints because I’m gradually getting stronger and healthier. That’s what’s really at stake here: I must convince others as well as myself that I have the desire, ability, and means to be the athlete that everyone once knew me as. I can’t make those endless days and nights in the hospital vanish. What I can do is make people not focus on that bleak period whenever they see me. Each day then becomes a slow, methodical, and deliberate movement toward reaching my goal to become fit. By early summer, with classes out, I start to feel much better about my appearance and myself. Muscles certainly help my self-esteem as well as warding off depression.

  CHAPTER 27

  JULY IS THE CRUELEST MONTH

  God must have a morbid sense of humor. Or life is simply filled with unexplained mysteries and uncanny coincidences. Take your pick: destiny, luck, or fate? Or all three?

  As the accident’s second anniversary approaches, I can’t help but feel the obsessive need to relive the day’s events—a day I don’t even remember, and which I’ve only been able to reconstruct from what my parents and others have told me. I’m not looking forward to July 6. It’s like I should hold an anti-celebration to permanently place that day forever behind me.

  On the day before, July 5, 2006, as I’m finishing up a weight-lifting workout at home, I get a call from my dad. “Brian, something bad has happened to Nana. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “She was at the doctor’s earlier this afternoon and they ended up rushing her to the hospital.”

  My grandmother’s health has been declining for some time. She’s been out in and out of the hospital several times. Her latest health scare resulted in quadruple bypass surgery several years ago.

  I’m very close to Nana, my mother’s mother. She’s a classy, glamorous lady who always had her hair and nails done. But she was also the type of person who wasn’t afraid to kick off her shoes and play soccer or hockey with me in the basement. Or, we’d go to the lake to fish, dribble a basketball around, draw together, or even watch cartoons on the television. She was always fun to be around and told great stories. A great buddy.

  When my parents and I arrive at the hospital, we are directed to Intensive Care. Uh-oh, I know what this means. We see my grandfather, Big D, first. He’s wearing sunglasses to hide his tears. I’ve never seen him like this before. He looks shaken, dazed, even shocked.

  We find out from my Uncle Joe that she’s in a coma. When I hear that word—coma—I’m overwhelmed by vivid flashbacks. Walking into her room is like stepping into the past. The same beeping and pinging machines that kept me alive are keeping Nana alive. She’s lying in bed, unresponsive and motionless, connected to a nest of tubes. Her eyes are closed but then sporadically flicker open from either the medication or irregular electrical nerve impulses misfiring in her brain. A ventilator is doing her breathing. A nurse dabs Nana’s forehead with a damp cloth. My heart is breaking as I stand by her bed. The nurse says that she went into cardiac arrest earlier in the day before slipping into a coma.

  Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening, I repeatedly go in to check on her between visits from other family members, and see if I can get any responses from her by slightly squeezing her hand. I know what it’s like to be trapped inside a locked-in body and how you need to make a connection to the outside world. But Nana barely responds to my touch.

  I return to the hospital the next morning with my parents. Holding her limp hand, I tearfully read her a letter that I composed a few hours before. I don
’t know if she can hear or understand me. I’m an emotional wreck when I get to the end.

  One week later, she passes away.

  CHAPTER 28

  BODYBUILDING

  Over the years, I have collected several pieces of exercise equipment, including a treadmill, stationary bike, bench-press system with a leg device to work the hamstrings and quadriceps, and an inexpensive Nautilus machine. I also have a punching bag, barbells, and set of dumbbells. I prefer to work out with free weights because it allows you to control the weight throughout the various movements.

  When I swam in high school, I needed to be lean, so I lifted light weights for repetition to build muscular endurance. But when it was time to bulk up for throwing the discus in track season, I switched my focus to lifting heavier weight at low repetitions. Now that my collegiate swimming career is on standby, I decide to concentrate on building muscle bulk. When I get home from classes at St. Mary’s, I eat dinner, do homework, and then work out for an hour and fifteen minutes. I often add some cardio on the treadmill.

  Within several weeks, I’ve gained a noticeable amount of weight. My diet consists of a protein shake at breakfast with two cups of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice. For lunch, it’s a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, a granola bar, a banana, another protein shake, and some yogurt. For dinner, I eat two chicken breasts, or lean meat and rice, or fish with a vegetable. For dessert, it’s another protein shake. Between the meals, I continually have healthy snacks—rice cakes, celery, carrots, peanuts, cashews, and apples.