Youngstown woman brings brother home from China

By JORDYN GRZELEWSKI

jgrzelewski@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Dawn Borosko knows that her brother will never be the same.

She’s just happy to have him home.

After eight months in a Chinese hospital, John Berisford, 36, of West Virginia, is now in St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital. That’s just a six-minute drive from his sister’s home — a source of comfort to Borosko, 41, of Youngstown, who from March until October worried she might never see him again.

“I try not to think about what could have been. Because I never should have gotten him back,” Borosko said.

Borosko’s last conversation with her brother was March 13.

Berisford was headed to the airport, desperate to come home after a few months spent in China, where he had worked as an English language teacher at the Web International English Training Center in Yangzhou since December 2013.

But he didn’t make it to the airport that day. He wouldn’t make it back to the states until Oct. 29, on an air

ambulance.

An accident befell Berisford at his apartment in Yangzhou the day he was set to leave China. The circumstances of the accident remained a mystery to his family for months.

“It was confirmed that he was beat with a steel pipe,” Borosko said.

The assailant took $600 from Berisford’s apartment, but left other valuables such as his computer, she said.

For the next several months, Berisford lay comatose in a hospital in Yangzhou.

“I think it all comes down to, if you travel, make sure you have money in the bank. Make sure you have a point of contact. Make sure you have everything in place. Make sure someone knows where you are at all times,” Borosko said, recalling her attempts to communicate with the Yangzhou hospital with help from the U.S. embassy.

Meanwhile, she was left to raise the $100,000 needed to pay his hospital bills and for an air ambulance to bring him to the states.

She and Berisford’s friends from West Virginia organized spaghetti dinners and jewelry sales, slowly chipping away at the huge expense.

As of early August, she was still far from her goal, with about $26,000 raised.

Then the unthinkable happened: “Someone donated $65,000,” she said.

The donors, a couple who knew Berisford before the accident and who wish to remain anonymous, met Borosko at a restaurant, where they asked how much she needed.

“[They] said, ‘OK, done.’ I cried the entire time at the meal,” she recalled.

At the end of October, Borosko was reunited with her brother.

“When they finally let me in to see him, there was eye contact instantly,” she said. “All of a sudden, he went ‘uhhhh.’ And he was completely relaxed after that.”

Berisford spent a few weeks at a Cleveland hospital, and then moved to the Select Specialty Hospital at St. Elizabeth about 10 days ago.

Borosko said her brother is doing a little better now.

His eyes are open. He is in stable condition, breathing on his own and responding to light, touch and sound.

It still will be a long road to recovery, however.

Also, the meaning of recovery has changed, Borosko said.

Berisford has an anoxic brain injury, a condition resulting from lack of oxygen to the brain.

“It affects everything,” said Borosko, who also is a nursing assistant at St. Elizabeth. “He’ll never be the same.”

Berisford has abnormal posturing, causing his limbs to press tightly against his body in a fetal position, a condition which Borosko said will never fully go away, although medication can help.

His heart rate frequently speeds up to dangerous levels.

He does not speak. His brain, however, is active, she said.

“Will he ever talk again? I’m optimistic. Will he ever walk again? Absolutely not. Will he ever write again? No,” she said. “But he can still have a quality of life. And I’m going to make sure he has the best possible life.”

Borosko does that now by visiting him for a few hours every day, before and after her shifts at the hospital.

She reads books and newspapers to him, talks to him, shows him the cards people send — which line the walls of his hospital room — and, she said, touches him to comfort him.

Borosko will never give up hope for her brother’s recovery, she said.

“He’s in there somewhere. I just don’t know where,” she said.

“Never give up. That’s the story here,” she said. “One day at a time is what we’re doing now.”