kingpin007
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2007
- Messages
- 1,888
Cocktail of drugs kills much-loved Toowoomba teen Kristjan Terauds
A FAMILY'S grief ... Ari, 14, and Danika Terauds, 16, at the funeral of their brother Kristjan in Toowoomba yesterday
Michael Crutcher
April 18, 2009 12:00am
IN a quiet Toowoomba street, they're still holding out for a miracle from the life of Kristjan Terauds.
They wanted it last week, when the 18-year-old lay dying in a Toowoomba hospital bed, the victim of a deadly cocktail of drugs.
And they haven't given up, even though Kristjan was farewelled at a funeral yesterday.
"When Kristjan was in hospital, I really believed there would be a miracle and that he would shake the whole thing off," Kristjan's mother, Helena Terauds, said.
"That didn't happen. But the miracle now will be if any of Kristjan's friends or anyone who hears about his story turns their lives around."
It's a story worth telling.
How did a cute-as-a-button toddler from a home bursting with love end up lying in his bed without a heartbeat one month before his 19th birthday?
Helena and husband David are still awaiting the autopsy results but they know their son was killed by a mixture of ecstasy and alcohol.
His bender at a Gold Coast music festival in late March was lethal. He had beer, five to seven ecstasy tablets in three days and a single barbiturate.
He was the latest young Queenslander to be cut down by the scourge of so-called party drugs, which also claimed Brisbane girl Rosie Bebendorf four months ago.
You wouldn't have picked Rosie as someone who would lose her life that way and you would not have picked it for Kristjan.
The mourners who dressed in the colours of the rainbow at Kristjan's funeral knew him as a kid any parent would be proud to call their own.
He had his teenage troubles but had grown past them and he was setting out on a new path.
He could be a joy around the house, he was a dedicated worker at a fruit juice retailer and he was a loyal friend who loved a good time.
Want more? Grieving dad tells his story in today's print edition of The Courier-Mail
Subscribe now: How to order your Courier-Mail
And he had ambition.
"In the last couple of months, he had told his friends that he was going to study political science or international relations and he was going to travel the world. And he told them he was going to change the world," David said.
David, Helena and their daughter Danika, 16, and son Ari, 14, showed remarkable strength this week as they sat around their dining room table and told stories of Kristjan.
And they kept coming back to a treasured family holiday in the Northern Territory in 2007 which showcased the best things about the eldest child.
There is a photo of Kristjan mucking about in Mount Isa and another of him splashing his family with water in the Katherine Gorge.
But Kristjan had to be forced to go on that holiday because he wanted to stay home, where he had begun experimenting with marijuana.
David and Helena, both teachers, thought a trip to the Outback might straighten him out.
"At the end of those three weeks, we were finally seeing signs of maturity because he realised what he had been doing back here was destructive," Helena said.
"He actually said to us that he could think again and he could rationalise things. He was so amazed."
The photos from that trip include shots of Kristjan enjoying his passion for rock climbing.
Look closely at a rock wall spearing out of a lake in Litchfield National Park and you will see Kristjan perched on high.
It was that taste for excitement and that touch of danger that led Kristjan to drugs, David said.
"He wasn't an addict at all but he thought that when you went away for a weekend, you have a few beers, you pop a couple of tabs," he said.
"He thought those things would enhance his time at a party and then he would get on with his week and then wait for the next weekend. That's the really tough bit to deal with.
"This time, he also had pneumonia but the doctors said that was nothing particularly special. It was definitely drugs."
The last five days of Kristjan's life were distressing for his friends and family as they clung to hope that he would recover in the intensive care unit of Toowoomba Base Hospital.
But Kristjan's only sign of life in those five days was twitching from seizures. He took his last breath early on April 6.
The Terauds do not appear angry. Instead they praise Queensland Health staff for their help and they can't seem to thank their friends and family enough.
"There was some anger and the terrible sense of loss," Helena said.
"I keep thinking of lost potential. When he was five years old at his childcare centre, we were told he had the construction skills of an eight- year-old.
"When he was in grade three, he was the first kid that his primary school teacher had seen solve a particular maths problem that she had set for years.
"All parents like to believe that their kids are super intelligent but 'we had proof'."
Helena said that last line in jest before becoming serious.
"There were signs that he could really have done anything. That didn't happen in the end," she said.
"There are too many variables when it comes to drugs. If you're going to play with fire, prepare to get burned. You can't predict how it's going to affect you. Kristjan didn't see it coming to him."
The Terauds have been told that the autopsy results will be sent to them by mail. It won't be until then that they learn which drug cocktail killed Kristjan.
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25348204-5018883,00.html
Only just saw this better late than never...
I think that's the real underlying problem - people forming so much of their life around antisocial practices that it becomes near-impossible for them to detangle themselves when they really want to...
