A mother's love

David Mazur has always been his mother’s “baby,” the younger of two boys to whom she gave birth.

When he was growing up, Donna Mazur did everything for David, according to his older brother, Shaun.

But never in her life did Donna imagine she’d be where she is today, taking care of the most basic needs of her now 36-year-old son.

When David was 22, he had a car accident on Shades Crest Road that left him with a traumatic brain injury. For more than 13 years now, David has been in what doctors call a “vegetative state.”

He can’t speak or communicate and has limited movement. He has a tracheostomy tube in his neck to provide an airway and a place to suction out secretions, and he has a feeding tube for nourishment.

Most people in his condition find themselves in nursing homes, but Donna and her husband, Chris, instead took the responsibility of caring for him on their own shoulders. They brought him home — the place where he has lived since he was about 4 years old.

Daily care

Together, she and Chris for 11 years made sure he got his daily medicine and nourishment, gave him breathing treatments several times a day and took care of his daily hygiene needs.

In July 2015, Chris died, leaving Donna as the only parent to care for David, which she has done for nearly two years now.

She has the help of a nurse who comes four to five hours a day, six days a week, but beyond that, it’s just her and David in the house.

“She’s an amazing mother,” Shaun said. “The love and dedication she has for him is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. David comes first. Everything else is second. She is the strongest woman I have ever met.”

Even when his dad was alive, Shaun said, it was hard to put into words everything his mother does for David. But since his dad died, “she’s taken it up a notch.”

“There are a lot of things that go into taking care of David. She makes it look extremely easy,” Shaun said. “I don’t know how she does those things by herself, but she does it.”

Gail Richardson, a registered nurse who has been coming to the Mazurs’ house to help care for David for more than five years, said she has been impressed with all Donna has learned to do. Chris handled a lot of David’s care, but since Chris died, “she’s had to take over everything except when I’m here,” Richardson said.

Not for everyone

Pat Motley, a resource coordinator for the Alabama Head Injury Foundation, said most people with long-term traumatic brain injuries end up in nursing homes. Of the 1,030 patients she serves in 14 counties in east central Alabama, only about 20 receive care at home, she said.

Many families start out trying to care for them at home, but their loved ones end up in nursing homes “just because they can’t do it,” Motley said.

Motley was not familiar with the Mazurs, but “it’s hard for me to imagine what their day-to-day life is like,” Motley said. “It’s like caring for an infant for life.”

Just taking care of the skin of bedridden patients who have little to no movement is extremely challenging, she said. They must be turned every two to three hours, she said.

Richardson said a lot of family members of people in David’s condition can’t deal with everything that comes with caring for them at home, either financially or emotionally. “Not everybody would be able to do this.”

Medicaid pays for Richardson to relieve Donna for 12 hours a week — between 1 and 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. And Donna pays $2,000 a month out of her own pocket for Richardson to also come between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, providing another 15 hours a week.

That gives Donna some time to run errands or get out of the house for a while — or maybe just get some decent sleep. She said she hasn’t really had a solid night’s sleep since Chris died. 

“I have to be aware,” she said.

She can relax and sleep better when she knows Richardson is there to keep an eye on David, she said.

Donna is trying to get in another Medicaid program that provides nursing care for 12 hours a day, and Shaun said he hopes she gets approved.

“She should have a life. She should be able to get out of the house and come and go as she pleases,” he said. “There’s nothing more that I want for her than to be able to have a life and see her friends and go out to eat. Yet at the same time, David is her priority.”

Donna said Shaun and his wife, Amy, always come over and take care of David whenever she needs them, but she is adamant that David is not Shaun’s responsibility, and she will never make him Shaun’s responsibility.

Shaun said his mother has definitely put her life on hold to take care of David, but “you’ll never hear a complaint from her.”

‘The life of the party’

David was an outgoing young person who lived life to the fullest, his mother and brother said.

“David was the life of the party,” Shaun said. “When my brother walked into the room, the whole room lit up … He loved life. There was never a dull moment with him.”

He was the type of person who would give you the shirt off his back with no questions asked, Shaun said. 

“He had a huge heart. He would put other people before himself,” he said. “He was fiercely loyal to his friends.”

David always kept his friends laughing and was known to be on the mischievous side, his mother said. His principal at Hoover High withheld his diploma for two days after he walked on stage at graduation with a beach ball, she said.

He never got into major trouble with police, she said, “but I don’t think there was a police officer in Hoover who didn’t know my son.”

The vanity plate on his Dodge truck said it all — Crazymaz.

“David did more in 23 years than most people do in their lifetime,” his mother said.

David’s last words

David’s wreck occurred in the early morning hours of Saturday, Dec. 27, 2003, but Donna said she still remembers it like it was yesterday. David was having a late Friday night meal with friends in Birmingham, and he called her and Chris about 1:30 a.m. to let them know he was on his way home, she said.

“The last thing he said to me was, ‘I love you, mom, and I’ll see you later,’” she said. “Those were the last words I ever heard him say to me.”

Then about 3 a.m., the phone rang again and showed “Hoover City Jail” on the caller ID. She at first wondered if David had been put in jail, but the caller told her David had been in an accident, and there were two police officers at her front door to take her to UAB Hospital, she said.

When they got to the hospital, the staff gave her David’s clothing, and the doctor explained David had a traumatic brain injury, and they had to remove his spleen.

However, “if you didn’t know he was in a car wreck, you’d never know,” she said. “There was not one mark on him.”

‘Don’t tell me to get a life’

On Sunday morning, one of the doctors told her she was going to have to learn to get on with her life, she said.

“I really wanted to punch this doctor out,” she said. “I looked at him and said, ‘That is my life in that room. Don’t tell me to get a life.’”

David stayed in the hospital until April 2004, and Donna said there was never a question in her mind whether David would go into a nursing home.

“This is my son,” she said. “David was coming home. This was where he lived and where he was going to be.”

At the time, Donna was on the Hoover City Council, and workers with the city of Hoover built a wheelchair ramp to get David into the house and fixed his room so they could fit a hospital bed in it, she said.

“For the first month, I lived in that room with David,” she said.

Ironically, Donna served on the board of the Alabama Head Injury Foundation for five years before David had his accident. But despite her time there, nothing could prepare her for when it was her own child, she said.

In the first year, David had to return to the hospital two or three times with pneumonia. He’s been in the hospital a few other times over the years for pneumonia or urinary tract infections, but it has been nearly two years since he had to stay there, she said.

One doctor once told Donna she needed to let David go and let the pneumonia take its course, but the next time she saw him, “I pointed my finger at him, and I said, ‘If you go near my son, I’m throwing you out this third-floor window,’” she said. “He turned around and walked out of the room.”

She found another doctor to supervise David’s care, she said.

To some people, David may not really be there, Donna said. “But to me, he’s here.”

“The doctors didn’t expect him to live the first two nights,” she said. “But here he is 13 years later.”

‘He knows I’m there’

David’s eyes open when he wakes in the morning and close when he goes to sleep, Donna said. His eyes move around, but no one can tell if he can see, she said.

“They know so little about it,” she said. “But to me, when I go in there and talk to him, and I watch his heart rate go up, I know that he knows I’m there. There’s no doubt in my mind about that.”

She wouldn’t change her decision to care for him at home for anything in the world, she said. “I don’t feel sorry for myself. This is a decision Chris and I made because he is our son, and this is what we wanted to do — not had to do.”

David’s nurse said if David were to go into a nursing home, he would probably be dead in six months.

“He gets much better care here at home,” Richardson said. “They’re really not equipped to give the kind of care that he gets here.”

Shaun said his mother is making sure David gets the best quality of life he can get for someone in his situation, and he hopes David can somehow realize that, even in his condition.

Donna said she sometimes has asked herself whether David would want to live like this. “Probably not,” she said.

She has wondered if she has been keeping him alive for selfish reasons, and she doesn’t know, she said.

“He has brain waves. I guess that’s what I have held onto all these years,” Donna said. “The bottom line for me is — I can go in there and talk to him. I can hug him. I can kiss him. I am not bringing flowers to his cemetery.”