Family of Coma-Stricken Teen Keeps Hopeful Vigil

THOUSAND OAKS — Dante Nunnery can hear their voices and feel their presence. He is aware of the love surrounding him as he lies in a coma at Los Robles Regional Medical Center.

In this his parents and five brothers fervently believe.

They file in and out of his room with the precision of sentries. Alone with Dante, a sophomore at Rio Mesa High School in Oxnard, they pray out loud and play his favorite music even louder.

“Dante has all our prayers circling over him, waiting for him to come out of it,” said his mother, Lorean Nunnery.

Dante, 16, was running down the basketball court during the final minute of a junior varsity game at Agoura High on Dec. 30 when he collapsed for no apparent reason.

He was breathing heavily after falling, said his coach, David Bregante, who rushed to his side. But Dante soon stopped breathing and Bregante could not detect a pulse.

A nurse attending the game and Agoura Coach Gerald Pickett administered cardiopulmonary resuscitation until paramedics arrived.

Three weeks later, Dante, whose parents said he has no history of medical problems, remains in serious but stable condition, and was moved Sunday from the critical care to the intensive care unit, a sign of improvement.

“He does seem to be getting more responsive,” said Dr. Mark Starr, Dante’s primary physician. “He has more eye movement and there is a strong suggestion that he may be getting visual stimuli.

“Several things go in his favor. His age is a plus. Younger people tend to do better. He does have brain function. And he is breathing on his own. Those are good signs.”

Starr said that two leading causes of coma--liver damage and diabetes--have been ruled out and that a blood test for drug use was negative.

“I don’t ask too many questions,” his mother said, “but the doctors say they can’t find a reason so far.

“He’s very comfortable. He opens his eyes sometimes when I go in the room. His facial expressions change. That tells me he’s aware.”

The notion is not farfetched. Doctors say that patients who recover from comas often tell of the comfort they felt knowing loved ones were present during their ordeal.

On Saturday morning, tears gently rolled down Dante’s face when his father walked into the room and began speaking in his low voice. James put his hand on his son’s forehead and told him everything would be all right.

“I have patience, I know this takes time and I see improvement in him every day,” said James Nunnery, the youth minister at the Bible Way Church of God and Christ in Oxnard. “What bothers me most is not knowing how it happened.”

The Nunnerys, a prominent athletic family whose reputation extends far beyond Oxnard, are comforted by the overwhelming sympathy extended by relatives, friends and Rio Mesa students and faculty. Phone calls, get-well cards and letters come daily.

A fund-raising dinner to be held in the Rio Mesa cafeteria is in the planning stages. Also, students will pass a can around each classroom this week so that Dante’s fellow students can make donations to the family.

With at least one Nunnery boy enrolled at Rio Mesa every year since 1985, many at the school feel connected to the family.

“It’s been incredibly difficult for everybody,” said Bregante, who is Dante’s history teacher as well as his coach. “I go to bed thinking about him and I wake up thinking about him. The team is completely torn up. It’s so frustrating to have no control over it.”

The protracted waiting game grinds down the family. Lorean Nunnery has taken a leave from her job with a video production company and remains with her son from morning to night. James Nunnery joins his wife each evening upon leaving work.

With the exception of Tim Nunnery, 21, who attends Fort Hays State University in Hays, Kan., on a basketball scholarship, Dante’s brothers take turns at his bedside, talking as if he can hear every word.

Swanson Nunnery, 23, a former Rio Mesa basketball and football player who lives nearby in Oxnard, plays Dante’s favorite Tupac Shakur album for him. Before the game at Agoura, Dante wanted to wear a T-shirt of Swanson’s that has the words “I’m Blessed” stenciled across it. Swanson put the shirt on his brother’s hospital bed the next day.

Tyrone Nunnery, 18, a Rio Mesa senior and varsity football and basketball player, updates Dante on the progress of the basketball team and what’s going on at school. Always fiercely protective of his brother--”They are like twins,” their father said--Tyrone won’t allow anyone to enter Dante’s room at home, figuring it’s bad luck.

The youngest Nunnery, 13-year-old Jonathan-Cory, an eighth-grader already blossoming as a basketball and baseball player, tells Dante how his favorite NBA team, the Houston Rockets, and favorite player, Clyde Drexler, are doing.

J.R. Nunnery, a former Rio Mesa basketball player and at 25 the oldest brother, is concerned for his parents and brothers as well as for Dante. He took a week off work to stay home and answer the phone.

“I worry about everybody,” he said. “But he is going to come through. We are keeping a very positive attitude about it.”

The hardest part is dealing with the seemingly arbitrary nature of it all. Why Dante?

Lorean Nunnery worried when two of her sons took up football, but never dreamed a tragedy could occur during a basketball game. Now, along with the unyielding attention paid to Dante, she frets about her youngest’s well-being.

“Jonathan-Cory is lonesome without his brother,” she said. “He’s been down.”

The family’s athletic nature makes the uncertainty surrounding Dante’s situation even more difficult. In uniform, they are used to making things happen. Waiting patiently is not their style.

“I go to the hospital, but I want to do something for him,” Tyrone said. “I don’t like seeing him like that.”

At school, Tyrone is constantly asked about Dante’s condition. Students and faculty are well-meaning, but by the end of the day, he needs a break.

“I come home and J.R. talks about it too much,” Tyrone said. “I tell him to shut up. He gets on my nerves.”

Normally, any tension in the household is cut by Dante, the family comedian. Loose by nature, he needles his brothers and laughs at himself, too. All his family wants now is to hear that laugh again.

“I’m leaning and depending on the Lord to bring Dante out of this,” his mother said. “We are very optimistic. We’ve put him in the hands of the Lord and believe everything will be all right.”