'He's still my son. ... He exists.' Kalvyn Stull is stuck between life and death

Kalvyn Stull survived, and died, on a June afternoon six years ago at Summa Akron City Hospital.

The now 24-year-old man, with dark hair and eyes, is largely confined to a nursing home bed. His body rests in a fetal-like position. He can open his eyes and close them. A box fan dries the sweat from his body. Cartoons play around the clock on a TV at the foot of his bed. No one can say for sure that he watches. He likely couldn't comprehend anyway. He's nourished through a feeding tube.

Sometimes, life comes at us in easy to digest black and white terms: Good and evil. Yes or no. Up or down. Right or wrong. Life and death itself, though, isn't always as straightforward or precise.

Kalvyn Stull, the man, is alive.

He's not brain dead. His brain stem still functions. It tells his heart to beat and his lungs to breathe.

But Kalvyn Stull, the son, brother, and boyfriend is dead.

He's in a brain-damaged vegetative state, unable to walk, talk or do anything for himself. He's likely not conscious of the world around him. It's the same condition as Terri Schiavo, a woman whose story made national headlines, beginning in the 1990s.

"The part of his brain that makes him Kalvyn is gone," explained his mom, Cindy Stewart of Lexington Township, near Alliance.

"Visiting him is like staring into an open casket," said his dad and Cindy's ex-husband, Dave Stull.

In June 2018, Kalvyn had just graduated from Portage County's Southeast High. He'd planned to go to the University of Akron. His world was large and inviting. He was entering adulthood, even if his mom and others still called him "Spank," because as a child he resembled Spanky McFarland from the "Our Gang" comedy shorts.

"He was always laughing and joking," said Cindy, who owns a hair salon near Lake Milton.

Kalvyn's girlfriend, Sidney Mitchell, called him "Kalvy." The couple had met in high school at Maplewood Career Center. They were always together. He was everything she's not. He was outgoing, adventurous. She's quiet and reserved. She'd moved in with him after graduation, into a house his mom owned on Greenbower Street NE in Lexington Township.

"Lived there for 17 days, until the accident," Mitchell said.

The accident.

It's where this story began, though it's only one part of it.

What happened in the accident?

Kalvyn was on his way home in the early morning of June 18, 2018, after a bonfire the night before. He was less than four miles away. For some reason, his eastbound Chevy Cobalt went off the north side of Pontius Street NE in Marlboro Township. It sideswiped a wooden fence on the driver's side and a tree on the passenger's side. The car climbed into the air. It landed about 30 feet away in a culvert.

Marlboro police were first on the scene. Then, firefighters arrived and removed an unconscious Kalvyn from the Cobalt. They rushed him to Akron City. His family would learn Kalvyn had suffered a traumatic brain injury. He made it through surgery. Soon after, he could follow simple commands and move body parts. He was expected to recover.

"The surgeon told us it went well, and that in time he would make a full recovery," his mom said.

Kalvyn would need time and therapy. He'd probably have to put off college for a year, but his family expected the old Kalvyn would return. Although younger than his brother, Kyle, and his sister, Kayla, it was Kalvyn who had a unique gift for keeping the family tight.

"He was like the glue that held us together," Kyle said.

Just two days after the accident, Kalvyn was breathing so well that Summa staff decided to take him off a ventilator. They removed the tube from his throat. It was just one of many milestones he'd surely check off along his path to recovery.

It went well — for the first couple hours.

Then, came the crisis.

Kalvyn's family file lawsuit against Summa

To this day, it's unclear exactly what occurred inside Kalvyn's hospital room when he began struggling to breathe.

Kalvyn's family filed a lawsuit against the hospital and some staff, seeking answers. In it, they allege a series of medical missteps, including a botched intubation by a first-year resident — which they say deprived Kalvyn of oxygen for nine minutes, leaving him in a vegetative state.

Summa attorneys "deny any statement or inference of negligence," in a court document.

The suit was filed five years ago, but it's languished in Summit County Common Pleas Court. One element of the case — related to access to the intern's hospital file — awaits a ruling from the Ohio Supreme Court, before the suit moves forward.

"It's kind of pulled the family apart," said Matt Stewart, Cindy's husband. "Sometimes, you think that maybe it would have been better if he had just died on the (surgeon's) table."

Life, death and existence

What remains of Kalvyn's life is contained within his 8-by-12-foot half of a room at Auburn Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation in Salem. A curtain can be drawn down the middle whenever a roommate shows up. Kalvyn's simple wardrobe of mostly T-shirts hangs in an armoire. His name is written on a SpongeBob Squarepants bulletin board, on a wall beside his bed. He always loved SpongeBob. Maybe it's because Kalvyn was a bit gleefully goofy, too.

"A lot of times, he sleeps with his eyes open," Cindy said, as she rubbed her son's head during a visit in March.

She retained hope for longer than anyone else in the family. She had hope at Akron City Hospital. She kept it when he was moved to nearby Select Specialty Hospital. And she held onto it the first few years after he landed at Auburn.

"He's my son. What else are you going to do?" she asked.

Now, six years into the ordeal, her hope is mostly gone. But Cindy said there's a reason Kalvyn, who is an organ donor, is still here. And it comes down to one of two possibilities.

"Either he's going to be a miracle of God," she explained, "or, he's going to save somebody someday (with an organ donation) ... and that day just hasn't come yet; that person's not ready to die."

The nursing home, she said, has done an admirable job with her son. Bedsores have never been an issue. Still, he's had to be carted off to a Cleveland hospital for an operation on his hip, a complication due to atrophy of muscles in that part of his body.

Cindy is Kalvyn's legal guardian, an action approved in Stark County Probate Court in 2019.

While the contentious Schiavo situation of the 1990s and early 2000s publicly involved everyone from religious leaders to President George W. Bush, that's not been the case with Kalvyn. Not once, Cindy said, has she considered any measures that would hasten Kalvyn's death.

"He's still my son. ... He exists," she said.

Kalvyn's siblings get updates from their mom. Neither has visited him in years. Not because they didn't, or don't, love him. But the Kalvyn in that nursing home bed isn't who they know and remember.

"My life and death belief is that once your mind is gone, you're gone," said Kayla, who's three years older than Kalvyn. "I made peace with my brother. Even though his body is still there, he passed away ... has no brain function. His eyes are open but no one is home."

Kayla's a mom now, too.

She can't fathom her mom's burden.

Most medical research suggests recovery from a vegetative state rarely occurs if the condition lasts beyond a year. And it's uncommon for anyone to live longer than 10 years in such a condition. Often, death is ultimately caused by a respiratory or urinary tract infection or organ failure.

"Eventually, if my brother doesn't pass of natural causes ... maybe there would be choices to make," Kayla said. "I've told my mom he has no quality of life. But I can't imagine ever having to make a decision."

Kalvyn's brother, Kyle, a year and a half older, said he's Googled everything there is to Google about brain injuries and vegetative states.

"In my mind, he's passed. ... They're keeping him alive, but he's a husk of what he used to be," Kyle said.

Growing up, Kyle would get frustrated when his brother copied him. If Kyle got a cool haircut, Kalvyn wanted the same one. Looking back, Kyle misses and appreciates the big brother reverence.

"He always had a sweeter spot than me," Kyle said, explaining no one got angry with Kalvyn because he was so nice.

Kalvyn Stull's name and handprint remains under creek bridge

Kyle hasn't seen Kalvyn in three years. But he thinks about his brother a lot. The way Kalvyn was, not how he is now. Once in a while, Kyle visits a creek bridge near Greenbower Street, where Kalvyn and some friends once wrote their names and left their handprints beneath it.

"That's the spot where I go," Kyle said, adding that it's strange because Kalvyn's name and handprint are still quite visible, while most of the others have largely faded and washed away.

Kalvyn's dad, Dave, now a retired nurse, spent Father's Day fishing with Kalvyn on June 17, 2018. And he was in the hospital room three days later, when Kalvyn was removed, then returned, to the ventilator.

"They suffocated him," Dave said. "I understand the nature of the injury ... global and catastrophic."

When Kalvyn left Summa Akron City for Select Specialty Hospital, his dad parked a camper there. But as the extent of his son's brain damage became more clear, Dave has tried not to dwell on it.

"I've tried to turn it over to the Lord," he said.

The intern's file and the Ohio Supreme Court

The Stull family's attorneys, Lee Plakas and Megan Frantz Oldham of Canton's Plakas Mannos law firm, accuse Summa and some of those who cared for Kalvyn of medical negligence, as well as loss of consortium, the legal term used when someone is killed or seriously injured.

"The Stull family has steadfastly refused to allow Summa’s years of appeals and attempts to hide the truth to deter them from getting answers and justice for Kalvyn," Oldham wrote in a statement for this story.

Summa declined comment.

"Out of respect for the legal process and all parties involved, we don’t comment on litigation," said Summa spokesman Michael Bernstein.

However, court filings provide some insight.

In their complaint, Oldham noted Kalvyn's post-accident drug and alcohol screens were normal. She summarized his signs of improvement after surgery, which included a left frontal craniotomy.

"One or both of Kalvyn’s parents were told that Kalvyn would require speech therapy but that he was expected to return to close to the old Kalvyn," the complaint says.

The filing also detailed what occurred after Kalvyn was removed from a ventilator at 10:25 a.m. June 20, 2018.

Citing medical records, it's alleged that Kalvyn began to have trouble breathing at 1 p.m. and was "very agitated with signs of respiratory distress."

At 1:20 p.m.; five minutes later, he had "difficulty with [his] airway." according to the lawsuit, and doctors did not attempt to re-intubate Kalvyn until 1:32 pm.

What does the complaint say?

The complaint alleges this timeline of events:

"Despite being re-intubated at 1:32 p.m., Kalvyn’s skin was dusky, his lips were blue, and his oxygen saturation continued to drop. Several minutes after re-intubating Kalvyn, physicians realized that the intubation tube was improperly placed in Kalvyn’s esophagus and not in his lungs. The intubation tube was removed and anAirway Team was finally activated.

"Multiple unsuccessful attempts were made to again intubate Kalvyn. Between 1:30 p.m. and 1:45 p.m., Kalvyn’s oxygen saturation was 4% or less. At 1:42 p.m., Kalvyn went into cardiac arrest and CPR was initiated.

"Kalvyn was finally successfully re-intubated at 1:55 pm, 55 minutes after he first started showing signs of failing the trial extubation and 35 minutes after demonstrating obvious and documented respiratory distress.

"The delay and failure to successfully intubate Kalvyn resulted in his cardiac arrest and a second, more serious brain injury, specifically anoxic encephalopathy or global brain damage due to a lack of oxygen."

Originally scheduled for trial in 2021, the suit against Summa has stalled largely over one issue — access to the employment file of the intern accused of Kalvyn's faulty re-intubation.

Stull's attorneys at Plakas Mannos demand to see it. They say it should contain information such as the number of intubations the intern had previously performed and if he were good or bad at the procedure.

Summa attorneys say they don't have to turn it over. They've cited a state law that shields teaching hospitals from being required to provide documents deemed to be "peer review" in civil cases.

"Peer review privilege was created to improve the quality of health care in Ohio," Plakas said in a prepared statement for this story. "It should not be used to conceal facts regarding unqualified or dangerous doctors or medical practices.”

Ohio Supreme Court agrees to hear the case

Summit County Common Pleas Judge Kelly L. McLaughlin largely denied Summa's stance in an April 2021 ruling. Summa then appealed to the Ninth District Court of Appeals. That court, in January 2023, sided with McLaughlin. So, Summa appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court.

It agreed to hear the case.

In a Supreme Court court filing, Summa attorneys wrote, "it is critically important to the quality of health care in the state of Ohio that all health care providers are able to protect the confidentiality of their resident files to ensure that they can freely review and evaluate the quality of care provided by resident physicians without fear that their records will later be subject to discovery."

Oldham stated that Summa has wrongly claimed every document in the intern's file is protected by peer review.

"Summa’s position," she wrote, "sacrifices its patients’ well-being in the interest of protecting its medical providers and itself and misrepresents the allegedly negative impact of the Ninth District’s opinion on future cases, the medical community, and patient care."

The health care industry and those in the legal profession have taken note of what could be at stake.

Proponents of both sides have submitted amicus briefs to the Supreme Court. It's a mechanism which enables third parties to provide information to the court to help it make a decision.

Attorneys for the American Medical Association, Ohio Hospital Association, Ohio State Medical Association, and Ohio Osteopathic Association say the court should reverse the appeals court ruling — that peer review protects residents, as well as full-fledged physicians.

"If the Ninth District’s ruling is not reversed and clarification is not provided to Ohio’s lower courts, Stull will cause irreparable damage to the trust in the peer review process and the willingness to engage in candid conversations to reduce morbidity and mortality among patients and improve the overall quality of health care services," they wrote.

On the other side, attorneys for the Ohio Association for Justice, Cleveland Academy of Trial Attorneys and Stark County Association for Justice say the appeals court got it right.

"The stakes are far higher this time, as this court has been asked to permit hospitals with residency programs to cloak their least experienced physicians in a cloud of secrecy that would follow them through their initial practical training," they wrote. "The purpose of evaluating a new physician during their residency program differs markedly from the purpose of a peer review committee, and the demarcation between these two different systems should be preserved."

The court heard oral arguments in the case in November — it has not yet made a ruling.

So, the Stull family waits to see what happens next. Kalvyn's old girlfriend, Sidney Mitchell, hasn't paid much attention to the lawsuit. Besides, she's not a party to the legal end anyway.

But she still visits her "Kalvy."

Young love, therapy and moving on

Back in 2018, at the time of the accident, Mitchell quit her job in a daycare center to rush to the hospital. For the longest time, she remained planted by Kalvyn's bedside at both hospitals.

"I basically moved in with him," she said.

She watched him sleep. She talked to him. She got pretty good at reading his monitors and what each of the numbers meant. She'd catch occasional naps inside Kalvyn's dad's nearby camper.

"I had to be there; somebody had to be there when he woke up," Mitchell said.

When Kalvyn moved into the nursing home, Mitchell was a regular there, too, for the first couple years. She hung photos of him and her all over his room. Photos from school dances and football games; from quiet times, silly times and tender times they'd shared.

"I've been through lots of therapy," she said.

First, she dealt with survivor's guilt. She was supposed to be at the bonfire and on the drive back to Stark County when his car crashed. But they'd quarreled that day, so she stayed home.

Then came the part about letting go.

"For a couple years, I still told everyone he was my boyfriend," she said. "He was the nicest, sweetest boy I've ever known to this day. He was a bit of a nerd, but I loved him."

These days, her visits are less frequent.

Mitchell lives in Streetsboro with her parents. She works in an auto body shop with her mom, and models part time. She's had a pair of romantic relationships in the last few years.

"They were bad ... nothing like I had with Kalvyn," she said.

Mitchell wishes Kalvyn had recovered. She wonders if more therapy could have made a difference. She swears he's in there. And that he makes eye contact with her when she visits.

"I still have hope; I'll always have hope," she said.

She still drives her 1999 yellow Volkswagen Beetle dream car — the one Kalvyn, his mom and her husband had arranged for her to get. She still has "Pork Chop," one of two pet pigs they shared. She's kept text messages on her phone. And she has a photo blanket of the couple inside her car — along with a fragile, dried rose he once gave her.

Reach Tim at 330-580-8333 or tim.botos@cantonrep.com.On X: @tbotosREP

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Kalvyn Stull is stuck between life and death in vegetative state