Thursday, January 15, 1987
Young Man beginning to Emerge From Coma
The news that he couldn’t spend Christmas with his family in Canarsie left Johnny Fantauzzi upset. After all, he has not been home since his motorcycle accident two summers earlier.
But even though his parents, John and Angie, were disappointed also, they found something encouraging in the thwarted visit.
Their son had responded to something. He had shown once again that he was still thinking, still having emotions, underneath the dark layers of his coma.
And there was more good news last week, on the second day of the new year. One of Johnny’s doctors confirmed what his parents and therapists have been maintaining for months: that Johnny is no longer in a “vegetative state.”
The 24-year-old former construction worker, a graduate of Canarsie High School is “in a state of emerging,” according to his father.
The ordeal for Johnny and his parents began 18 months ago when the young man borrowed a friend’s motorcycle to ride “just around the block,” his father said. There was a crash involving another car — the details have never been learned — and Johnny received a head injury that left him comatose. Doctors doubted that he would ever awaken.
For three months he was a patient at Brookdale Hospital Medical center, where the private-duty care he received laid the foundation, according to his father, for Johnny’s later progress. The private-duty care was funded partly by donations from the public.
Johnny went from Brookdale to Plaza Medical in Camden, New Jersey, the nearest facility his parents could find for adult patients in Johnny’s condition. It was nearly a year after that before Johnny began to disprove his doctors’ prognosis.
The months of physical therapy and patient attempts at communication at last helped Johnny break through. He began to move parts of his body. With his eyes he was able to answer yes or no to questions, showing that he could understand and remember.
Although communication is still sluggish, Johnny is now showing his parents and therapists that he can read and comprehend sentences, recall his past, keep track of his day-to-day activities. The people who work with him daily are “enthused” about his progress, his mother reported.
Angie Fantauzzi knows as well as anybody how to read the minute advances in Johnny’s condition, to interpret the small movements or changes of mood that express what he’s thinking. Not only has she known him all his life, she’s been with him nearly every day since his accident. Since his transfer to Camden, she’s been driving five hours a day, seven days a week to help with his care and therapy.
Most of Johnny’s communication is done with his eyes. Keeping them open means yes; blinking means no. And he expresses more-subtle things with his eyes, too, according to his mother. “Even before his accident, if he was annoyed, you’d just have to look at his eyes and they’d tell the whole story.”
He’s lucky to have been born with expressive eyes, she laughed. “It’s the only thing letting us get through.”
Since Johnny “speaks” mainly by answering yes or no, communication requires that the right questions be asked. His parents are hoping he will regain enough use of his hands to use a special computer keyboard. He could then say more fully what’s on his mind.
No one knows yet how much damage was done to Johnny’s brain or what his potential for recovery is, according to his mother. He may have reached his “peak” already, or he may continue to improve, she said. She noted that other coma patients at Plaza Medical have gone home “90 percent” recovered.
What his parents know for sure is that their son has already outdistanced the projections of his doctors. “Whatever progress you make month to month, you just hang onto that and hope for more,” Angie Fantauzzi said.
Among the accomplishments Johnny’s supporters hang onto are his ability to keep his arms erect when asked to do so, the two times he smiled for his girlfriend, the way he cried on Thanksgiving. “You could actually see his chin quiver, and he frowned,” recalled his father. “That’s an emotion you don’t want to see, but the therapists say that’s good — that he’s showing emotion.”
Simple movements, normal emotions — but for Johnny, milestones on his road back to normalcy.
It’s been an arduous road not only for Johnny — who works at his therapy eight hours a day, just like a job — but for his family as well. His mother quit her bank job in order to care fo Johnny. She didn’t complain bout the 10-hour days she spends away from home every day of the week — “I can’t stay away from my son” — but she and her husband both admitted the tragedy has been a drain financially. Although Medicaid is paying for Johnny’s care, the Fantauzzis are spending $1,000 a month just on traveling costs.
“The public really came through,” said John Fantauzzi.
Johnny’s mother said their son will sometimes “shut you out” — and then admit later that he was annoyed or frustrated about something. “There are times when he gets depressed,” his father noted.
But both are clearly proud of their son’s courage in this battle. “Johnny’s a fighter,” said his father. “Johnny’s been through a lot, and he’s going to pull through this.”
One day a therapist asked Johnny, “are we going to fight this thing all the way?
With his eyes, Johnny Fantauzzi answered yes.
“Johnny’s a fighter,” his father repeated. “He’s not going to give up easy.”
CAPTIONS:
Some progress after many months of physical therapy and patience has given Canarsie residents Angie and John Fantauzzi hope their son Johnny will recover further from a debilitating motorcycle accident.
CALLOUT:
Left comatose by a motorcycle accident, Fantauzzi is now “in a state of emerging.”