CHAPTER SIX
Baseball Bear
Parks really had made all the arrangements at Methodist, and there was no check-in procedure the Hodges had to go through when they arrived two hours later. Instead, they were whisked straight to the fourth floor, where Dan’s room in the Intensive Care Unit waited for them. Unlike at Pickens County, this room provided a couch and two chairs, and the hospital staff had wheeled in a cot so Dan’s parents could stay with him as long as they wanted.
Parks had made the trip to Indy, too, and he stood speaking with the Hodges while the nursing staff helped two medics situate Dan in his new bed.
“I want you to understand that this isn’t a typical setup, you two,” Parks explained to them. “The ICU is usually off-limits except during very specific times of the day, but it does not appear Dan’s immune function has been compromised in any way.” Parks lowered his voice and cast a furtive look toward the hallway. “And besides, the head of the ICU owes me a favor.”
David smiled for the first time in a day, and even Clara cracked a small grin.
“Now,” Parks said, “let’s see what we’re dealing with here.”
—
What they were dealing with there — after a CT scan, multiple EEGs and EKGs, more X-Rays, nearly hourly blood tests, and a dizzying array of specialists — surprised even Dr. Parks.
Oh, he’d had a theory, but it seemed silly when he said it out loud to the team of doctors he had called in to help at Methodist. It seemed silly to them, too, but all of them wanted to help Dan and, as men and women of science, they were always up for a good mystery.
Still, no one really expected Parks’ theory to be correct, but in the end, it was the only one that made sense. The only one that matched the available evidence.
Clara and David looked at Parks expectantly as he paced across the ICU room floor at the foot of Dan’s bed. He was making them nervous, and they wished he would just spit out the news that was agitating him so much, but he was building for the big reveal and would not be denied.
“So,” Parks said, still walking back and forth, head bent toward the floor, “what we found is Dan’s levels of melatonin are off the charts, while his thyroid levels have plummeted. That’s the general trend we find in sleeping people — elevated melatonin, depressed thyroid. The difference is usually quite slight in terms of sheer numbers, but it’s still enough to induce sleep. In Dan’s case, though, the gap between melatonin and thyroid is about five times what we’d normally see in a young man in the midst of deep sleep.”
Finally, Parks stopped in the middle of the room and faced the Hodges, spreading his arms out in an expression of revelation. “In fact,” he continued, “the only place we would normally see such a discrepancy in hormone levels is in … a hibernating animal!”
David looked confused, and Clara’s jaw slacked open. “Wait a minute, Doc,” David said. “Are you trying to tell us that Dan is hibernating?”
Parks put both hands in front of him showing his palms to Dan, and shook his head. “I know, I know,” he said. “It sounds completely crazy, but there is no way to deny his endocrine patterns match those of a hibernating bear almost exactly.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense!” David protested. “He was going to school and playing baseball just a few days ago, and now we’re supposed to believe he’s hibernating? It’s spring, for Pete’s sake! Even animals don’t hibernate in the spring! They come out of hibernation when it gets warm!”
Parks nodded. “That’s true, David, at least in most cases, but the stimuli for hibernating and waking are different for different animals and in different locations. Their hormones all follow the same basic pattern, though, and right now Dan’s looks for all the world like that of a hibernating bear.”
Clara had recovered from her initial shock, and she looked to Parks with hopeful eyes. “Doctor,” she said. “Hibernating animals always wake up, don’t they? I mean, you said there is some stimulus for them to come out of hibernation?”
“Yes, that’s right, Clara,” Parks said with hesitation. He seemed to anticipate where Clara was heading with her question.
“So what’s Dan’s stimulus to wake up, doctor?” she asked. “What can we do to bring him out of hibernation?”
“Um,” Parks looked nervously from David to Clara,”I’m afraid I don’t have an answer to that question, Clara. At least not yet. Animals all have natural stimuli to move them along from state to state — a change in temperature or environment, maybe some sort of internal clock. We can’t know at this point what Dan’s trigger might be.”
“Wait a minute,” David cut in, not quite done with his previous line of questioning. “Dan is not an animal, so I don’t see how any of this has anything to do with him. If you expect me to believe he’s ‘hibernating,’ then can you at least tell me how that might have happened? What was the ‘stimulus’ for that?”
David was starting to get agitated, and his voice rose as he talked. Parks stayed calm and spoke in soothing tones.
“I understand you’re frustrated, David, and I have been frustrated, too, with not being able to give you better answers. But I’m confident we have found out what is going on with Dan, and I also think we know what caused it.”
David opened his eyes wide and thrust his neck forward as if to say, “I’m waiting!”
Parks paused, trying to decide how much to divulge, but after a few seconds he went on. “Even though Dan’s initial scans didn’t show any swelling in terms of the brain pushing against the skull, subsequent, deeper scans did show something anomalous.”
David and Clara both looked alarmed, and Parks tried to calm them. “Now, it’s nothing too ominous, but I did notice the pocket surrounding Dan’s pituitary gland was swollen this morning, potentially creating pressure on the gland itself. In case you don’t remember from high school biology or health class, the pituitary gland is the master gland that controls pretty much all the others. It also regulates how much growth hormone is in your body and so contributes to growth and aging, or the slowing of aging.
“But beyond that, the pituitary also plays a vital role in controlling the rest of the endocrine system, including melatonin and serotonin. And when we look at the endocrine profiles of hibernating animals, we find significant differences in these hormones from where they are during ‘waking’ states. The bottom line here,” Parks concluded, “is the blow to Dan’s head seems to have caused swelling around his pituitary gland, and that added pressure has caused his endocrine system to malfunction, mimicking a hibernation state.”
“So how do we reduce the swelling,” David asked.
Parks frowned and looked straight into David’s eyes. “The swelling has already subsided, but Dan’s hormone levels have not changed.”
Clara looked sick. “When will he wake up?” she asked, dazed by the events of the past few days and the unbelievable story Parks was telling them.
“I’m afraid I don’t have that answer, either, Clara,” Parks said. “It’s still early in Dan’s recovery, and the swelling has only been gone since this time yesterday, so it may be that his pituitary just needs time to ‘decompress’ and get back to normal function. In the meantime, we’ll just have to monitor him and make sure nothing else is wrong, or goes wrong.”
“There has to be something you can do!” Clara exclaimed. “Or something we can do,” she added, looking to David. He squeezed his wife’s shoulder.
Parks moved closer to the couple and touched their hands with his. “He’s in the right place, Clara,” Parks assured her. “Nothing is going to happen to your son, but this is one of those situations we can’t force. The human body is resilient, especially when it’s a young, healthy body. Dan just needs time, and I’m confident he’ll come back to you.”
“But what if he doesn’t?” David asked. “Could he be like this forever?”
Parks shook his head. “No, David, we won’t let that happen. If nothing has changed in a couple of weeks, we’ll reconsider o
ur options. For now, though, let’s give Dan a chance to figure this out on his own, OK?”
David and Clara nodded, but neither one looked confident.