That's the question the family of former France international Jean-Pierre Adams, whose life was brutally turned upside down in 1982, asks itself every year on key anniversaries.
Thirty-three years ago the beefy footballer, then 34, walked into a Lyon hospital for some routine surgery to correct a troublesome knee.
By the time he left, he would never talk, walk or move any of his limbs again.
His wife Bernadette has tended to him ever since, barely missing a day's care over the last three decades.
"No one ever forgets to give Jean-Pierre presents, whether it's his birthday, Christmas or Father's Day," Bernadette told CNN.
The 67-year-old can breathe on his own, without the assistance of a machine, and has his own room, where he spends most of the day in the type of modified bed normally found in a hospital.
Jean-Pierre's disastrous surgery reduced a flamboyant character, who had risen from humble beginnings in Senegal, to one who has been in a persistent vegetative state ever since.
A France international player in the 1970s, Jean-Pierre is now incapable of nearly all voluntary movement but can digest food as well as open and close his eyes.
Bernadette looks after her husband with an unfailing love -- dressing, feeding and bathing him, turning him over in his bed to avoid sores, and often losing her own sleep to ensure he gets his.
It's a measure of their bond that on the rare occasions Bernadette spends a night away from home, Jean-Pierre's carers notice his mood seems to change.
"He senses that it is not me feeding him and looking after him," says his wife of 46 years. "It's the nurses who tell me, saying he is not the same.
"I think he feels things. He must recognise the sound of my voice as well."
"From there, he was to come home," recalls Bernadette. "But he was walking along a corridor in the hospital -- where he knew no one -- when a doctor who knew all about football, since he looked after the Lyon team, walked past."
Stopping to talk, the doctor instantly offered to help and after an instant consultation, he decided upon surgery and booked Jean-Pierre in for an appointment: Wednesday 17 March 1982.
When the date came around, there was a problem as the hospital staff were on strike.
Jean-Pierre's case was far from urgent -- he could have soldiered on for a bit -- but the surgery went ahead nonetheless.
"The female anesthetist was looking after eight patients, one after the other, like an assembly line," says Bernadette.
"Jean-Pierre was supervised by a trainee, who was repeating a year, who later admitted in court: 'I was not up to the task I was entrusted with.'
"Given it was not a vital operation, that the hospital was on strike, they were missing doctors and this woman was looking after eight patients, in two different rooms, someone should have called me to say they were going to delay the operation."
They never did -- and between the anesthetist and trainee, numerous errors were made.
Jean-Pierre was badly intubated, with one tube blocking the pathway to his lungs rather than ventilating them, meaning he was starved of oxygen whereupon he suffered a cardiac arrest.
"I found him lying on a bed, tubes everywhere," she remembers after rushing to the hospital. I didn't leave the hospital for five days. I thought he was going to wake up and that I needed to be there."
When she felt fresh air again, the world had become a very different place.
After 15 months in hospital, local authorities suggested to Bernadette that the best place for her husband would be a nearby home for the elderly.
"I don't think they knew how to look after him, so I said to myself: 'He will come home' and I've looked after him ever since," says Bernadette.
Every day, she wakes just before seven o'clock and has her breakfast -- precious minutes spent alone -- as she readies herself to care for her husband.
It's a mix of changing clothes, shaving, preparing food -- all of it blended -- and delivering it, which can take an hour, helping Jean-Pierre go to the toilet, while also helping the kinesiologist ensure his lungs are clean and his muscles exercised to avoid choking and atrophying.
If she is lucky her day finishes at eight, when Jean-Pierre might go to sleep.
"Sometimes when the night goes badly, I'm up for the whole thing."
"I talk to him all the time -- about TV, what's in the mail, anything!" Bernadette says. "There is always movement around him. He is always next to us."
When I ask whether she ever imagines conversations the pair might have had, the 72-year-old Bernadette momentarily chokes up -- a brief insight into the true cost of the accident for a proud and serene woman.
"I don't know," she replied. "It's difficult to say. I say he doesn't understand my words but there might be moments when he has a flash. Perhaps for an instant, just an instant, he understands something."
It's unlikely though.
Post A Comment:
0 comments: