OUR STORY

I woke up on March, 19, 2016 like any other day, my fiance kissing me goodbye while the sky was still dark to go out and do what he loved, and lived for, to cycle.  That day the unthinkable happened and Will and I fell victim to an absolute tragedy.  After being struck by an SUV at an intersection just blocks from our home, after several hours of riding that Saturday afternoon, this ride would not end up back home.  

My world shattered as I heard the gut wrenching three words Traumatic Brain Injury echo through my bones and rattle my soul.  At 39 weeks pregnant, I faced the unimaginable. The scans revealed Will sustained a Diffuse Axonal Injury grade 5, and he was charted as a Glasgow 3.  Will received a ventriculostomy on Day 1, to help reduce evolving pressure, from an already severely damaged brain. He was on life support and remained in a coma for three weeks and three days.  At one point, the attending Neuro team advised me he likely would reside in a PVS.  I refused to accept this and cautiously held onto hope.

My water broke in room 14B of the ICU, just  two weeks after the accident, forcing me to welcome a new precious life, aside my fiance who was locked out of his own.  Instead of taking walks with a newborn swaddled in pink, I was pacing my baby girl, just weeks old, in the hallways of the ICU and intermediate care.  

After living 3 months in a cold hospital room, it was time to make the move I denied for so long, and that was to a longterm living, acute care facility.  This is where Will would have to prove to defy all odds and emerge from his minimally conscious state in order to stay.  In fact, we all had a lot of proving to do at this juncture.   It was not until we moved to the brain rehabilitation facility, when I was hit with the cold hard truth; this was not a recovery that would be measured in days and weeks, or even months, but it was going to take years. I knew then, time was going to be our best friend.  

We all imagine the worst when we so often test our fate, but we never imagine what it would be like to wake up from a month long coma and have to relearn how to hold our head up, continence, how to talk, walk read, write, and everything you can imagine as an adult.  We never imagine having every single memory we have ever made stripped from us.  There is no shoe that fits all, there is no formula to follow.  As our days turned into weeks, Will began to emerge, we finally began seeing the tiniest signs of connection in his brain.  After 6 very long weeks, we returned home with Will in a wheel chair, wearing diapers, and unable to communicate.  I had no time to adapt, but quickly began adjusting to a new normal, finding new strength with every sunrise.  After a few short months of being home, Will began spiraling downward and regressing before our eyes.  After two different hospital admissions and discharges, we finally found our answer, Will was hydrocephalic and needed emergency shunt placement.  Our journey continued to be full of twists and turns, and the only consistency was the inconsistency.  But the days turned into weeks and weeks into months; we learned where there was a Will there was going to have to be a way.

I had two bodies that were completely dependent on me to survive, and I was committed to love them unconditionally.  I held our baby starting a promising life in one arm, and her father, who lied clinging onto what was left of an unforeseeable future on my other arm.  It was in these moments that I felt incomplete, broken, robbed, yet strangely so refined; it was in these very moments I knew my life would never be the same.  I was fascinated by what I was observing and I was determined to understand it better.  I was dedicated to educating myself on everything there was to know about the physiology of the brain after injury, and what it would require to return it to an optimal pre morbid state.  I explored many different avenues such as holistic and functional medicine approaches, methods of neurological stimulation, acupuncture.  I administered high quality supplements, BCAA, electrolytes, and rich sources of fatty acids, in an effort to nourish and protect the broken brain from further chemical damage, and also assist it in rebuilding itself physiologically and mechanically.  I continue to find modalities of treatment which I like to use trial and error, as some prove to be effective, offering more promising results than others. 

The more I read the more I find what researchers once knew about the brain, turns out to be invalid or incomplete data.  The literature is being rewritten and discoveries about the brain, its functions, and its ability to heal are rising on the frontiers of neuromedicine today, at an accelerated rate.  In efforts to shed light on brain injuries and the importance of safety in a city that thrives on such an immense involvement in risky activities including boating, cycling, skating, and sports, we built the Strong Will Foundation to raise awareness and offer a resource for others who are piercing their very own souls with the same three words we were hit with, Traumatic Brain Injury.