SPRINGS, NY — The brother of a Long Island man who was beaten, robbed and left for dead while on vacation in Colombia is now ready to fly home to the United States.
"I feel as though I've witnessed a resurrection," Springs resident Tom House said, of his brother John.
"John keeps improving, he's been cleared to fly since yesterday," House said Tuesday. "Every conceivable bit of paperwork has been completed over a day ago, a bed is waiting for him at Delray Medical Center, and now — we wait and wait," he said.
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There have been some delays with the scheduling of a flight and transports, he said. "Just when relief is in sight, Kafka-esque redundancies and criss-crosses that seem designed to prolong our stay and fray our last nerves," he said.
And yet. There is the miracle that overshadows any inconvenience — John is alive.
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"There was no telling what the other side of this would be. For a while it was thought he would die," House said. "Then we didn't know if he would regain consciousness and what his condition would be if he did. Then I walked in that one day and his eyes were open, but he was still intubated. Two days later and he was off ventilation but delirious and hallucinatory. Then that started to abate, slowly. But each day, a little more of him comes back, and now it could be, after rehab in Florida, he may achieve a full recovery. It's been an extraordinary experience, watching someone slowly come back to life."
The nightmare began on Mother's Day: House's brother John, 69, who had gone on a vacation to Colombia, was found drugged, robbed, and barely alive in his hotel room.
John, who had been on vacation in Medellin, was found by a hotel worker who raced him to a local hospital. "If not for her, it's quite possible I'd be writing an obituary instead of a plea for communal hope," House said.
The hotel worker was the first in a sea of good Samaritans who have stepped forward to lift House up during the darkest of days as he scrambled to find a way to Colombia, to be by his brother's side.
Last week, House said, John's condition deteriorated rapidly. "He was intubated and was expected to die," he said.
But John showed signs of improvement and movement — and then, he was removed from the respirator.
After a sea of mishaps, including a rush to renew his passport and then, a flight that was mistakenly never booked, House made it to Medellin and Clinica Las Vegas, where, at the time John was unconscious and on life support.
"I was able to stay in the room and talk with him for several hours, though his eyes remain closed. And I was able to hold the phone close to him so our mom and niece and other family members and friends could speak to him," he said.
The struggles have been seemingly insurmountable at times, with House trying valiantly to navigate a communication barrier both at the hospital and with Medellin police. He's had to cut through red tape and navigate new channels to reach the U.S. embassy in Bogota.
And yet, in the darkness, there were rays of light and hope: "There were many, and especially four, people in Medellin who came to our aid in amazing ways: Fabian Castaneda" — a relative of a neighbor's worker in the Hamptons — "who picked me up at the airport, drove me close to the hospital, and even gave me pesos in the car so I wouldn't spend time searching out an ATM. Sargento Conde met me at the hospital at 2 p.m. and got everything started with pressing charges. Santiago Velasquez, the last and most essential person at the police station, spent hours filing the case itself, all with a compassionate and amiable spirit. And above all, there is the amazingly patient and thoroughly good Laura Cristina, the hotel receptionist who found John unconscious in his room on Sunday and called an ambulance," he said.
Cristina stayed with House for five of the seven hours he spent with police and at the police station "with explanations and painstaking translations that would have tried the patience of several saints. The end result — I finally left with a copy of a filed case. At many points, it seemed that would not happen. We also have the promise of the police to begin acting. They will visit John at the hospital to determine if the suspect not only drugged him to what might have been a lethal degree, but intended murder. The hope is they will be arrested imminently," House said.
Although John had remained unconscious and on the ventilator, his eyes began to open while House was speaking with their mother, who lives in Florida, on speaker.
"I have a small Bluetooth speaker here in the room, and I've been playing some of the music I know he loves — those of you who know John, know of his passion for classic rock. If he can hear, that will be a solace to him, for sure," he said last week.
Complicating the effects of the powerful drugs he was given, John was also found to have pneumonia and arrhythmia; the arrhythmia has since resolved.
On Wednesday, John's eyes were open for a bit when House arrived. "They are still partly open at times. He blinked his eyes in response to some questions. I played one of his faves, 'Shine on You Crazy Diamond', and I think he was trying to sing along to it," he wrote.
Speaking with Patch, House said he's been operating in "crisis mode." On Tuesday, he said, his brother showed "remarkable" improvement. "The sedation was stopped, so that explained the drastic change. He was clearly trying to communicate with me — telling me which music he enjoyed, etc., mostly with his eyes and eyebrows. The physical therapist came in once and we did some of the mobility exercises together. I explained some of them to John and he did move his legs a few times on his own."
His brother, though, was often agitated and even seemingly angry, unable to say what was bothering him, House said.
Of seeing his brother angry and bewildered, House told Patch: "'It s----' is not strong enough."
House said his brother normally lives in Florida, where he has been caring for their mother since their sister's death from endometrial cancer last June.
"He was going on vacation, he needed a break — and then this happened," House said. His brother arrived in Colombia on the Thursday before Mother's Day — and the drugging and robbery happened on Mother's Day itself.
"He was meeting a friend," House said. "My mom didn't hear from him all day on Mother's Day and then we found out he was in the hospital."
Describing the horrifying details, House said that to the best of their knowledge, someone put a very high dose of benzodiazepines in his drink, three times the normal dose.
"It was enough to make him unconscious so he could be robbed of everything he had. He was found in his hotel room unconscious; luckily, the hotel staff knew he was supposed to check out and fly home, so they checked on him."
What followed was an experience rife with confusion and terror. Suddenly, House and his niece began receiving messages from John's phone, asking for money. At first, he said, they thought he'd lost his phone. But then came a message on What's App in Spanish, saying John was "in very bad shape, and unconscious, in the clinic."
House contacted the friend his brother had been slated to meet and said, "You need to go to the clinic and see if this is true." The texts demanding money, up to $4,500, were continuing and confusing, House said.
But when the friend arrived at the hospital, House learned that his brother had been admitted. The frustration over the communication barrier mounted; finally an international patient coordinator was able to explain what had happened.
His brother's friend was ultimately called to the hospital "because he was the only physical person that was there" and told he had to come to the hospital immediately. "They thought he was dying," House said.
House sprang into action, but found his passport needed renewal and then, the snafu in his flight reservations. Finally, he got a red eye to Colombia — and that's when kindness began to create a path of hope in the midst of chaos.
And, while at first, there was the long haul to Colombia, and "every possibility that he would die," now, the future looks brighter.
House was fearful not just for his brother but for their mother, about to be 89 in Florida. "There's just the three of us left in my family now," he said. "We used to be six, now we are three." Besides the loss of their sister last year, they lost a brother years ago and their father, three years ago.
"My mother said, at one point, 'You know what? I see his eyes opening. I see the two of you walking through the door together. That's what I believe.' Then she said, 'No God would take two of my kids in one year.'"
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