Three years ago, 18-year-old Jessie Scott dropped into a deep coma after he was given the wrong dose of a potent medication.

Though it was supposed to be a safe teaspoon of oxycodone hydrochloride to help relieve the pain from a strep throat, a Walmart pharmacy dispensed 20 times the dose prescribed by his doctor.  Mistakenly undiluted, the dose Jessie took was 100 milligrams instead of five.

It appeared everything had ended for the budding high school graduate with a 4.0 grade point average.

His organs were failing. He was on a ventilator.  “If you’ve got family, now’s the time to call them together and pay their last respects,” the family was told by doctors, who said if Jessie did survive he would remain in a vegetative state.

But Jessie defied the odds.

Though the overdose fried his brain and left him paralyzed, three years later he’s alive and amazingly alert at age 21.

He’s had a few years to mend physically and psychologically.  “I’ve forgiven. Better to forgive than live in a world of hate,” he says from his newly built apartment connected to the family home.

His mother, Laurie Scott, agrees. “We don’t have feelings of anger or animosity or revenge,” she said. "As bad as it was, as horrifying as it was, I never gave up hope.”

Every morning, Scott walks through an adjoining foyer, knocks on Jessie’s door then enters.

“Good morning,” she says.  “How did you sleep?”

Jessie takes his regimen of medicines and begins a new day.

Though the family can’t talk about the court ordered settlement with Walmart, Laurie and Wayne Scott feel satisfied with the resources available to their son — resources that could last his lifetime.

A new custom electric wheelchair will soon arrive giving Jessie a chance to move about on his own.

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