This is the inspiring story of a young man, Dan Caro, and his family, who must rebuild their lives after he is severely burned in their garage at the age of two. They must adapt to a new life that will enable their son to move ahead with his life. How Can YOU Play Drums? illustrates the challenges and obstacles they encounter during his school years as he strives to find a life for himself.With God's love and support, Dan and his family are able to achieve what they originally thought was unimaginable given the hard road that Dan has had to travel. Dan becomes a professional jazz drummer and through his music he becomes an inspiration to others. He has no limitations given his circumstances and in addition to his music, he becomes an inspirational speaker who has travelled across the country playing his drums and speaking to thousands of people!

How Can YOU Play Drums?

Finding Positives from AdversityBy John Caro

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 John Caro
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-5342-6

Contents

Introduction.................................................................viiChapter 1: The Day That Changed Our Lives....................................1Chapter 2: The Healing Begins in Boston......................................12Chapter 3: Danny's Preschool Years...........................................24Chapter 4: School, Sports, and Family Fun....................................30Chapter 5: Medjugorje........................................................38Chapter 6: Danny's Intro to Music and High School............................68Chapter 7: Danny's Budding Career............................................73Chapter 8: Office Work and Toastmasters......................................83Chapter 9: The Effects of Katrina............................................88Chapter 10: Danny Becomes a Shriner and Meets His Mentor.....................93Chapter 11: What Has This Done for Danny and Us?.............................98

Chapter One

The Day That Changed Our Lives

The morning of Wednesday, March 17, 1982 (St. Patrick's Day), started out like a typical New Orleans day in early spring. The temperature was mild and sunny, and flowers were starting to bloom. The grass needed cutting, and I figured I would cut it on the weekend, which was just a couple of days away. Our day started at about 6:30 am. We woke up Johnny (age ten) and Scott (age six) and went through the normal routine of getting them dressed and fed and off to school. Danny was two years old, so we didn't bother to wake him that early, but he probably heard the hustle and bustle, as he got out of bed to join in. He didn't want to miss anything.

After Johnny and Scott got on the school bus and everything settled down, I kissed Marilyn and Danny good-bye, and they followed me outside to see me off to work. Marilyn had Danny in her arms, and he was crying because he wanted to go with me. I looked in the rearview mirror until they were out of sight, and I was off to another busy day at the insurance agency that I had formed with a good friend just two months earlier. About an hour after I arrived at my office, our new secretary answered a phone call, and I overheard her saying that it was a wrong number and that there was no John Taylor here. I told her that maybe she'd misunderstood and that they were actually looking for me, John Caro. The phone soon rang again, and sure enough, it was my next-door neighbor and good friend, Donna. In a relatively calm voice, but with a sense of urgency, Donna said, "John, this is Donna. Danny has had an accident, and you need to come home."

I responded, "I just got to my office, and I have a busy day planned. Can you tell me what happened? Is it serious?"

Emphatically she answered, "I'm not sure how serious it is, but please come home right away. I think they're taking him to the hospital." I started getting a little nervous but consoled myself with the idea that Danny, always into everything-climbing, running, and so on-probably had broken his arm or something. Surely it couldn't be life threatening, but was it serious enough for her to call me? Marilyn did tend to exaggerate small injuries. On my way home (a thirty-minute trip), I had to cross the Mississippi River bridge, which was always loaded with traffic. I was beginning to get nervous. As I approached the top of the bridge, a yellow fire-station ambulance passed me. In the back of my mind, I wondered if Danny was in it. When I arrived back home, Marilyn and Danny were not there. The garage door was open, and a couple of lingering firemen told me that Danny had been burned and that he and Marilyn were on their way to the hospital. The firemen told me that he had been burned pretty seriously.

I walked around to survey the damage, but I could see none, other than soot on the walls and the smell of smoke. The structure hadn't been damaged, so I thought it couldn't have been that serious. While completing his report, one of the firemen asked me, "How long has your family lived here?"

I said, "We have only been here about a year."

He asked me, "Have you had any other fires in the house in the past year?" and I said no. He said, "It looks like the water heater ignited and caused a flash fire, but to be sure, we will continue to investigate the cause." As he continued his questioning, I looked around the garage and saw that a plastic broom we had recently bought was partially melted. I also noticed Danny's new Snoopy tennis shoes on the floor. The rubber tops of the shoes had melted into the canvas.

I asked the fireman, "Can you tell me exactly what happened here?"

He replied, "When we arrived, we saw that your son had been burned, and Mrs. Caro was in a very emotional state. We proceeded to remove the baby's burned clothes and shoes, and then we took him from the garage and onto the grass in the front yard and poured water from your pool over his little body. One of your neighbors, Norman, who had been a volunteer fireman in his past, also came to help when he saw the fire truck and ambulance in front of your home, just as we were pouring water on your son."

Norman, who was standing there, said, "Little Danny was very cooperative and managed to get up on his hands and knees as they poured the water over his burning body. He was a real little man to cooperate as he did."

The fireman said, "Immediately after that, we put Danny in the yellow ambulance, and his mother got in, and they rushed them to the hospital."

I still had no idea of the seriousness of the accident. I walked into the backyard and saw the lawn mower on the half-cut patch of grass. Marilyn had started cutting it-something she had never done in our eleven years of marriage-and she had been interrupted because of the accident. The firemen told me that they had taken Danny to Charity Hospital in New Orleans because it had a burn unit. Also, Charity Hospital had one of the best trauma care emergency rooms in the country. My good neighbor Donna never left my side during the five minutes I spent surveying the garage and yard. The firemen said that Danny probably had been in the garage, looking for his wagon or some other toy, when he'd knocked over the gas can that was stored in the corner of the garage, opposite and as far away as possible from the water heater. The firemen said that the spilled gasoline probably had ignited when the water heater lit the fumes traveling low to the ground; Danny happened to be in the middle of the flash that ensued. Images of bad sunburn entered my head, but I refused to accept the seriousness of the situation.

Donna told me that we had better leave for the hospital. She drove, and I prayed. The anxiety was starting to build in me.

Donna knew how badly Danny was burned, because she was the first neighbor to arrive on the scene in response to Marilyn's frantic screams for help. The trip took about fifteen minutes, but it seemed a lot longer. It was an awkward feeling, because the day had started out so normally, and now disruption and chaos had stepped in.

As we arrived at Charity Hospital, the traffic was heavy, and there was no place to park, so Donna dropped me off. She told me she would make sure that our other sons, Johnny and Scott, would be okay; they could stay with her until we returned home. She and her husband were great neighbors and friends that anyone who needed help could always depend on.

I walked up the ramp to the emergency room entrance. The building, built in the 1930s or 1940s, reminded me of buildings from the old black-and-white movies like Miracle on 34th Street and Citizen Kane. Inside, very old ceramic tile covered the lower half of each wall; some of the tiles were broken. The walls had been covered with many layers of paint. My thoughts were that the patients here were usually indigent or uninsured poor people, drug addicts, and gunshot victims. We would get Danny out of here as soon as possible and put him in a good private hospital.

Down the hall to the right was a waiting room; as I recall, Marilyn was the only one in the room. She was shaking and sobbing. I believe she said, "He's bad off." We sat down, and as I hugged her, I noticed that one of her white tennis shoes had a charred spot, possibly from a piece of Danny's burning clothing. This was just a hint of what was to come.

The emergency room physician came to see us right away. He said, "Danny is in surgery, undergoing a procedure called an escharotomy, which is done on seriously burned patients to release the pressure of the body fluids rising to the skin. In this procedure, the surgeon makes a surface cut along the full length of the torso and the arms and legs, to release the pressure. This procedure actually keeps the skin from bursting open." Then he hit us with the bad news. He said, "Danny has third-degree burns over most of his body, and most people with burns that extensive don't survive. The superheated air that he almost certainly breathed probably burned his lungs, which would also cause them to fill up with fluid. He could go into respiratory failure, which usually shows up within seventy-two hours." He said, "There's a military burns hospital in Texas. I don't know if they will accept your son, and I don't even know how to contact them, but I suggest that you try to find out more about it, because if your son survives and needs intensive long-term care, we at Charity Hospital cannot provide it, because we do not have the facilities to treat him for more than a couple of days."

As I listened to him speak, I realized that I didn't know where to begin and that he didn't have any answers for me. I was helpless. With so much negative information being thrown at me, I was overwhelmed. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. In a stupor, I remained relatively calm, although I was confused and scared.

The doctor left the room, and very soon thereafter, the emergency room nurse told us that Danny was out of surgery and that we could see him now. We went out into the corridor and saw Danny lying on a gurney; the surgeon and the nurse were with him.

He was unrecognizable. His body was swollen and discolored. He was on a respirator, his skin had been sliced open down his torso and along both arms and legs, and his muscle tissue was exposed. His entire body was charred and gray. It was then that I finally realized how seriously he was injured. The surgeon said that he was a very sick little boy and that he would be brought to the second-floor burn unit to be cared for. I don't think she gave me a prognosis, but my head was swimming, so I don't really remember. I did see the doom in her eyes as she talked to us. They rolled Danny away, and we followed to the waiting area of the burn unit. The attendant told us that we would have to stay in the waiting area while they got Danny situated, and they would let us know when we could be with him. They had done the emergency procedure to save his life for the moment. I didn't have any idea what to expect for the next few hours, and I was too shaken up to research any other facilities. I didn't know what to do. I thought to myself, God help us.

The waiting area was a small area cut out of a nook in the corridor. It was furnished with a small desk and a phone, a tattered sofa, and a couple of old chairs. In spite of the run down appearance, I knew that this hospital was one of the best trauma centers in the country.

We'd been in the waiting area for about twenty minutes when they told us it was okay to see Danny. We entered the burn unit and had to scrub up and cover our faces and clothes with paper garments before seeing him. When the nurse escorted us in, there he was, lying flat on his back, with bandages on both arms and legs and covering his hands and feet. He had no clothes on his tiny body, and he was covered with a shiny, white cream that we were told was Silvadene, a common topical antibiotic ointment used for burns. His surgically sliced-up, charred body was still oozing. His little eyelids were inverted because of the swelling. Most of his hair was burned off, and he looked horrible beyond anything I could have imagined. Right then, I thought that our little, mischievous, energetic, "rotten kid," as I jokingly called him, was probably going to die. I began to cry as sadness replaced confusion. As I looked at his formerly perfect little body, so pitifully mutilated, I imagined the excruciating pain and fear he was experiencing. I really thought at that moment that he would be better off dying, just to be relieved of his misery. He had been in the middle of a small explosion. If he survived, he would probably be blind, crippled, and scarred and would have no chance of a good life. How would we take care of him in that condition? I worked twelve to fourteen hours a day and had no time for my family and myself as it was! Danny would probably have to be put in an institution of some kind, and how long could we afford that? We were keeping up with our bills and saving a little, but we had no wealth by any means. Our lives would be destroyed along with Danny's.

Marilyn and I were able to stay with Danny for about ten or fifteen minutes every two hours or so. They ushered us out when our crying became uncontrollable each time. The nurses and doctor were constantly monitoring Danny, and they were in sight of him at all times. On one of our short visits, the nurse changed the bandages on Danny's hands and feet. When she slowly and carefully unwrapped the hand bandages, all of his flesh came off with the bandages. All that was left of his tiny fingers were the bones. We were shocked and stunned. We weren't prepared for this. We had known that he was badly burned, but we didn't realize until then that his hands had been cooked to the bones. I began to feel sick from the shocking new discovery. Suddenly I felt dizzy, and a great emptiness came over me. It didn't seem real. How could this be happening? Marilyn was at my left side, and I think we were holding each other up. Indescribable sadness overwhelmed us both at the sight of our little baby suffering horribly before our eyes, and we were helpless to do anything about it.

The nurse started to unwrap the bandages on his little feet. Slowly and gently, she unwrapped them, and again, along with the last layer of bandage, the skin from his little toes peeled off. I imagined the enormous pain Danny must be suffering as his skin was peeled off. Then I recalled his melted Snoopy tennis shoes on the garage floor. I prayed and pleaded while crying uncontrollably to God to please take him to heaven. "Don't let him suffer anymore, dear Father in heaven. Please take your baby!" I cried. I love him so much, and I couldn't stand to see him in so much pain.

Both Marilyn and I were crying by then, and Marilyn said, "No, I still want him, no matter what, even if he's blind and crippled."

As we stood by Danny's bed, I noticed that his little stomach was moving erratically, and I asked the nurse why it was happening. She said that he was crying, and since he was on a respirator, we couldn't hear him. I recalled an occasion when I'd had a bad dream, tried to scream for help, and couldn't utter a sound. The terror had awakened me in a cold sweat.

Was Danny experiencing this kind of panic? He couldn't see because his eyelids were inverted and swollen shut. He couldn't utter a sound, and his skin was being torn off his body with the bandage changes. Just a few hours ago, his body, face, and head were severely burned and sliced open. We didn't realize that he could hear us in our very emotional state, and I'm sure he was really frightened by hearing us. Each time we broke down emotionally, they made us leave the room, and when we regained our composure, they would allow us back in.

It was about 2:00 in the afternoon, and our family members began to show up. The phone in the waiting room rang every few minutes as concerned family members and friends called. Each time I answered the phone, I had to explain Danny's condition, and the tears and sadness reemerged. Within an hour, the small waiting area was filled with our family and friends. Thank God for their presence and support. Without it, it would have been ever so hard to endure this unbelievable ordeal ... and it was just the beginning of a long and painful change of life for all of us.

Evening came, and all the visitors had left. Marilyn and I were all alone. It was late, and the security guard told us we would have to leave the hospital, as they didn't allow visitors after 10:00 pm. I begged her to let us stay. I told her that our son was dying and said we could not leave him. She kindly said that she would check with her supervisor, who reluctantly allowed us to stay. They locked the doors at night, because the hospital was in a high-crime area, and sometimes the bad element entered, looking for trouble. Once, a crazed outsider had entered the hospital and shot a patient.

Marilyn was so exhausted and drained that she slept off and on, but I was too anxious and stressed to sleep, so I prayed constantly through the night and between visits with Danny.

Morning came, and the hospital was already in high gear at daylight. Danny's condition had not changed, but he was stable. Throughout the morning, they continued to change his bandages and cover his body with Silvadene cream. A couple of family members came back to be with us. I'd thought Danny would have died by then, but he was still hanging on. A chaplain came by to offer us prayers and hope. Another elderly lady who was visiting someone noticed our distressed and emotional condition and stopped to tell us the story of her son who had died at age seven and the wonderful memories she had of him. I listened to her, but at the moment, I didn't want memories! I wanted Danny! Without him, the rest of my life would be void of joy. I couldn't imagine life without any of our precious sons, and now the youngest one was about to die.

(Continues...)

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