It was the call that no parent ever wants to get. Meaghan and Ryan Meister’s 17-year-old son, Jeffrey, had been rushed to the hospital after taking a nasty fall.
According to reports, the teen was looking at his phone as he walked up some steps at his girlfriend’s house. The six-foot, two-inch tall high schooler smacked his head on a light fixture, mid-way up the steps, when he fell backward onto a concrete landing. Jeffrey’s head took the brunt of his fall, striking the concrete and leaving the teen’s future completely unknown.
Jeffrey’s girlfriend called his parents, but Ryan admits he wasn’t sure what to expect of his son’s condition. He never could have predicted the severity of Jeffrey’s injuries, as her comments were “short and brief.”
“We thought it was a concussion or something,” Meaghan said.
Upon arriving at a Sparrow Hospital in Grand Ledge, Michigan, Jeffrey underwent emergency brain surgery after doctors discovered extensive brain damage.
Through further examination, medical professionals informed Jeffrey’s parents that the teen’s skull had cracked open, breaking in half. As a result, he’d suffered from an internal brain-bleed, swelling and a stroke. Doctors removed the right half of his skull within an hour of arriving to the hospital, relieving pressure from the brain, which was shoved to one side of his head and crushing his spine from the force of impact.
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In Jeffrey’s split-second fall backward off of the steps, the teen was now in a coma, with no promise of ever waking up.
For five days, Meaghan and Ryan along with their two younger sons, Jackson (8) and Jacob (11), spent countless hours worrying, hoping, praying and talking with their lifeless son and brother at his bedside. They were beginning to lose hope, and the thought of life without Jeffrey was becoming more of a devastating reality.
That’s when the unthinkable happened.
Jeffrey woke up five days after his life-changing fall, uttering the words “dad” and “mom.”