Defying the Odds

The fact that Jason Crigler was standing in front of a room filled with caregivers today was nothing short of a miracle. He and his sister Marjorie were presenting the story of his against-all-odds recovery from a devastating cerebral hemorrhage he suffered while performing music onstage at a NYC nightclub in August 2004.

The occasion was Schwartz Center Rounds at New England Sinai Hospital in Stoughton, MA. It was a little different than typical Rounds, in that a patient and a family member were presenting. More typical is a presentation by a multidisciplinary panel of caregivers presenting a patient case that was challenging for psychosocial reasons – as opposed to clinical ones.

Jason and Marjorie showed a couple of short video clips of Jason during his stint at a rehabilitation hospital in Boston. He couldn’t move or talk and his hands were frozen into claw-like positions - his face immobile. Yet there he was yesterday, looking like nothing had ever happened, except for some slight vestigial contraction in the fingers of his hands.

He and Marjorie spoke about the four most important components of the compassionate care they received during Jason’s hospitalization. Here they are:

1. Personalized care: Jason said that he responded better to caregivers who treated him as an individual. One speech therapist asked him to write a paper on what it was like to produce a record- which proved to be a very effective exercise because it tapped into his passion.

2. A positive attitude by his caregivers: Jason said he didn’t want people to paint an unrealistically rosy picture, but he wanted them to emphasize the things he was able to do, and to build on that.

3. An ability to think large and act small: Marjorie said that Jason’s stroke affected many parts of his body, large and small, including his teeth and his eyes. In the hospital, he was sweating a lot so the nurses would put a fan on him, which would then dry up his eyes, which wouldn’t close after the stroke. A vision specialist prescribed an ointment that solved the dryness. Marjorie said that she was thankful that caregivers had large goals for Jason – that he would stabilize and recover – but that they didn’t forget the small things.

4. A balance of intelligence and intuition: Marjorie told a story about a nurse at the rehab hospital who sensed that something was not right with Jason at one point and sent him off to an acute care hospital to be checked out. It turns out a shunt in his brain had become infected. Afterwards, when Marjorie asked the nurse how she knew something was amiss, the nurse said it was a hunch.

Back in November, we featured a short documentary about Jason at the Schwartz Center’s annual dinner and afterward he came up on stage and sang a song with his wife Monica. It was very moving. You can see the song he performed today in the documentary.