BRUTAL ORDEAL

Father says son unlikely to come out of coma

Father says son unlikely to come out of coma

“We try to be optimistic and positive all the time through, but it does come to the point where reality has to set in.’’ Dale Mahar

Dale Mahar knows a good outcome is unlikely for his son who has been in a coma for six months following a horrific fall at a construction site.

“It’s not good. It’s not looking good at all,’’ says Mahar.

“We try to be optimistic and positive all the time through, but it does come to the point where reality has to set in.’’

Doctors have been telling Mahar and his wife, Lori, the possibility of their son, Ryan, ever coming out of a coma is highly unlikely.

Even if he did, Mahar adds, he likely would never recover from the violent injury suffered when he fell roughly 20 feet landing head first on pavement while working to build a warehouse in the Elmsdale area on Sept. 4.

“Just too much damage to the brain,’’ says Mahar.

Following the accident, a CT scan performed at Prince County Hospital in Summerside revealed Ryan’s skull had been severely fractured.

Ryan, a 32-year-old father of three who was living in Emerald, P.E.I., was then taken by ambulance to a hospital in Moncton.

He was moved to Prince County Hospital weeks later, where he has remained in a coma.

The ordeal of hoping against hope week after week, month after month, has taken a heavy toll, says Mahar. “It’s been pretty brutal,’’ he says. Mahar told The Guardian in an earlier interview that his son seemed to have found his calling in construction work.

Ryan had worked in mussel fishing for several years and later spent time working on large carrier ships.

Neither job was overly appealing to him.

Mahar said his son seemed hooked from the start when he got into construction work just two months before the accident.