I’m Mac. I’m 25 years old.

In 2001, I was a triple major at Virginia Tech.

I only finished freshman year.

In the first month of my sophomore year, in less than a minute, the life I had—that was unbelievably great—ended with a car crash.

 You probably remember where you were when The Terrorists attacked in 2001—on 9/11.

I do not.

I don’t remember any of that September.

When the brain receives information, such as making up memories, it takes time to complete the storing process—called imprinting.

Nineteen days after the terrorist attack I was in a severe car crash. My brain was unable to imprint the memories of my short-lived sophomore year at Virginia Tech.

They tell me that I came home that weekend to help my grandmother move—my grandfather had died the April before, Evidently, I was with friends that night. We decided to go to the nearby Silver Diner. Two of the friends had just started dating. I told the guy that I’d take the long way ‘round so that the two could be alone for a. while.

I was driving down Springvale Road, in Great Falls, heading toward the French restaurant—L’Auberge Chez Francois. My grandparents used to live near there and I liked passing the restaurant to see the lights in the garden at night. According to the accident report it was almost one a.m. Springvale Road is really rural and has no cuiverts. It’s like driving through a tunnel because of the high banks on both sides.

According to 4 witnesses, who had just left L’ Auberge, a Jeep Grand Cherokee—behind the witnesses’ Chevy Suburban—had just gunned its motor, and crossed the double-yellow lines, into my lane, to pass the Suburban. Both SUVs were climbing a really steep hill, side-by-side. The police said I was on. the other side of the hill—driving the speed limit, minding my own business—when at the top of the hill the Jeep met my Honda Civic, head-on. Because SUVs have high bumpers and can ride off-road—over boulders—riding on top of my Honda Civic was a natural.

The Jeep glided over the Honda’s hood, crashed into the windshield, entered my driving compartment—and pushed the dashboard onto my legs. The SUV immediately crushed my thighbones, broke my feet, and tore my spleen and lung.

During the collision, the Jeep—before flipping several times—tore my airbag—then scraped against my car door. The Jeep crushed my elbow— and removed skin and muscles from my arm—and dented my head. I’m bald under my hair and there’s actually a dent there.

The force of the Jeep—as it scraped my car’s left side—caused my car to spin and slide at high-speed, back down the hill.

The force made my brain literally crash against my forehead—as  if  it
were  a  melon slammed against  a  brick  wall.   Then my brain
slammed back against the back of my skull.

The inside top of your skull has ridges—and during that slamming—the ridges also tore at my brain. When the Jeep crushed the side of my car— and crushed my left arm—my brain slammed, like that melon on brick, against the right side of my skull, then back against the left side.

As my car spun around—and because my airbag had been torn—and despite wearing my seatbelt—I was shaken like a rag doll, so that my brain also spun around—on its brain stem. At that point, my brain’s left and right hemispheres sheared apart—in opposite directions—the way an Oreo cookie would, when twisted apart. All this slamming, tearing, and shearing, gave me what is called: a Severe Traumatic Brain Injury.

A traumatic brain injury never heals. The survivor just learns to compensate.  Kind of like when you’re blind, your other senses take over. But with a brain injury, the brain’s other pathways have to take over.

Because there are so many bad drivers out there, and drivers who drink or do drugs—a brain injury occurs every five seconds. Some are worse than others. My brain injury was everywhere in the brain—not just one spot. And the brain injury was about as bad as it gets.

I also had wounds on the back and side of my head. According to the police detective, one of the witnesses—the man who stayed at my side—has never recovered from seeing me so bloody and horrible.

The reason they fly you to the hospital is because you must get stabilized by ER surgeons—within an hour—to maximize recovery.

I didn’t even remotely make it within that hour.

First, the witnesses’ cell phones couldn’t be used because it was in a dead area. They had to run down long driveways trying to get to someone’s house to use a phone.

Second, when the medivac helicopter arrived, it took a while to find a place to land.

Third, I was trapped in the car and the fire department also had to come. The “jaws of life” was used to tear off the car’s roof to get me out, And that also took time.

Then the EMT had to carry me—on the stretcher—in the dark—to where the helicopter was—in a field—off somewhere.

I was admitted to the Fairfax Hospital Neurotrauma Intensive Care, as a Code Blue—which means “resuscitated at the accident site.”

I was in a coma for 6 weeks. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t even breathe. A ventilator tube was surgically placed through my neck, into my throat, so the ventilator could breathe for me—and about eight IV bags of medicine, liquid food, water, and morphine were attached through a catheter that was surgically imbedded in my chest, near my heart. Later, they put in a feeding tube through my stomach.

Oh—and about the morphine—after the coma—when I took it for pain—it made me crazy. Between the morphine and the brain injury, I saw rats under my bed and thought I was buried alive. In more lucid moments, I was certain my mother was poisoning me and I’d try to bite her—and refused to eat. So they put a feeding tube in my stomach a second time.

After the crash, there was so much hemorrhaging inside my head that my brain began to swell—pressing against the skull—getting damaged even more. Think of a sprained ankle, which is a type of bruising. The ankle swells up and to reduce the swelling, it gets wrapped with an ace bandage, Not so with a swollen brain.

 The first neurosurgeon wanted to remove my frontal lobes to save me. Another one said if I lived, “I’d have to be watered for the rest of my life—likea vegetable.” But he didn’t remove any damaged tissue from my brain because it is very risky—good tissue, too easily, can be removed with injured tissue. A haircut isn’t neurosurgery. But THINK how easy it is to get a bad haircut. Instead, the neurosurgeon removed 2 silver-dollar-sized portions of skull from my forehead, Only one little strip of bone remained in the middle of my forehead to protect the brain at that spot. Then the skin was stretched back over my forehead and stapled in place. This gave me a Frankenstein-like incision, from temple-to-temple, at my hairline. When my hair is shorter, you can see the Frankenstein-scar very well.

There’s also a dime-sized scar, about an inch from my forehead, where they stuck in a tube to pump out the bloody fluid from my brain. Actually it took three tries—to stick the tube into the right place in the brain.

The swelling was causing my brain to get bigger and bigger—like a heavy, water-laden sponge—jammed against rigid skull.

The doctors feared that the pressure from the fluid would make my brain fall back on its brain stem and kill me. Later on, the brain continued to have fluid build-up—due to the severity of injuries. The neurosurgeon placed a permanent pump—called a shunt—inside my head. The shunt must forever drain excess fluid into my abdominal region—or I’ll become comatose again. The shunt is creepy because it feels like there is a hard rectangular object under my skin, at the skull, just above my neck.

One would think that once the car crash takes place—and, if you don’t die immediately—or within a couple of days—right away you’ll start to recover.

WRONG.

In the days and weeks after the accident, I had lots of near-death medical issues. For example, the marrow—from my broken thighbones—literally floated in my blood stream and ate holes into my lungs. Giving me what’s called: Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Had I NOT been a year- round swimmer, since age nine, I would have died from the ARDS.

I also got pneumonia four times. My liver almost gave out for a few days— but luckily, the impaired liver only turned my skin yellow, instead of killing me. I also developed blood clots in my arms and legs. Also, the night of the crash they had to slice my arm open—in three places—to release fluid build-up—that was literally going to strangle the nerves and muscles.  I have these ugly, bulging scars on my arm—that look like white leeches.

Also, one deep clot—in my leg—migrated into my lung—and nearly killed me—and that happened about two months after the crash.

Due my scrambled brain, I had severe reactions to some of the medications. I even developed an allergic reaction to the strong detergent used on hospital bed sheets and had hives on my body—that looked like poison ivy. Luckily for the deep coma, I wasn’t tormented by a severe itch.

When in the Neurotraurna Intensive Care Unit, I was in a mechanized bed— which pivoted my comatose body at regular intervals.

The automatic movement prevented pressure sores. When I was moved out of neurotrauma, three weeks into the coma, my mother asked why I was no longer in the special bed, since I was still comatose.

Nursing explained that the Intermediate Care Unit encouraged movement by the patient. But deep coma patients don ‘t move.

My chart shows that, in early November, five weeks into the coma, I had developed the worst kind of sacral wounds—caused by pressure from immobility. The twin wounds bore down to my bone, making the bone visible. The wounds were exacerbated by an occurrence of C-Diff, an intestinal, infection caused by all the antibiotics I had to take—or caused by having too many, near-death issues.

Anyway, the bowels—wet as water—weakened the bandage’s adhesive— and seeped into the horrible wounds. It took just a few days to develop the wounds. But it took FOUR months—and lots of painful shoving of gauze—into the tunneled wounds—before they finally healed.

The most significant problem with the wounds was that, later, during rehab, I screamed with agony—when tied to the tilt table. Therefore, the tilt table was employed frequently and my legs got weaker.

Soon contractures in the legs began to develop—with no hope for reversal.  It was as if my legs had turned to cement, while in a sitting-position. They literally could not straighten. The rehab staff kept pressing against the rigid legs—as if trying to shut an overfilled-suitcase. That made me scream even more.

Getting back to the coma, I also developed an antibiotic-resistant type of staph, which is still in my body.

In fact, during the years since the crash, I have had four bouts of this really bad staph—which can kill you. Twice, I almost lost my left arm because the staph suddenly erupted and was so virulent. Once I had to undergo three emergency surgeries in nine days—to save the arm. They had to leave the wound open—because an open wound is a sterile wound.

You could literally look inside the wound and see where the elbow should have been. Since the doctors had to remove all the infected tissue, the middle section of my arm was entirely empty of muscle and bone—it looked like an empty duffle bag. The wound also exposed bone in my upper arm and in my forearm. Maybe you’ve heard that “urban legend” about the cow with the window in its side, so people can view the cow’s stomach-contents. Well, my open wound was worse than that. You could see when some gauze accidentally got stuck on the bone right inside my arm—into a gaping—4 inch by 10 inch opening. They had to soak the open wound in a whirlpool to remove the gauze—then reach in and yank at the gauze because it wouldn’t come out. Slaughter House stuff—not so nice. . . It hurt. I screamed.

And all this happened two years after the crash.

Last fall I got more crash-caused news: My injured brain now has developed a Pituitary Tumor.

My injuries just keep building on one another—even though I’ve had a half decade anniversary of the crash.

Anyway, the tumor might stay about the size of your pinky-finger nail—or it could cause blindness and infertility.

Speaking of oddities, caused by injury:

In the weeks—just following the crash—my swollen brain was sending all the wrong messages to my body. For example, it told my body to start growing bone in the muscles and tendons.

This bizarre bone growth is like jagged metal. It digs against soft tissue, when the person tries to move. It’s a mystery to medicine and has to be surgically removed. But if it’s grown around nerves and arteries—and it usually is—this weird bone has to stay. So I live with this jagged bone digging in, each time I move.

But, hey, if you’re alive you can learn to do anything—even live with pain.

The injured brain also told my body to give me dangerously high blood pressure—as if I were a 70-year-old smoker. It also told my body to give me a “near heart-attack” heart rate—and a really high fever that was like having malaria in a jungle. They often had to put me on ice blankets and my mom, and girlfriend, had to cool my face with cloths that were put in ice; but the heat of my body literally would melt the ice.

I came out of the unconscious part of the coma on November 12—six weeks, and one day, after the crash. In a movie when someone comes out of a coma, he or she suddenly wakes up, and everything’s okay. The actor can talk and get dressed, and has a pretty good memory.  Except that the weeks—or years—in the coma are a big mystery and make a good film plot. In the movie Kill Bill—the character who just emerged from the coma— killed someone, stole a car, wiggled her toes, and drove away. How unrealistic is that?

During the first weeks, after waking from unconsciousness, I couldn’t remember things at all. For example, I was given a drawing of a dog and asked what it was. I answered it was an umbrella. When asked to name the first U.S. president, I answered “Washing Room.”

When told by the speech therapist to draw a clock—which is the most useful test to evaluate mental dysfunction—I couldn’t even fill in the numbers. I knew something was very wrong with my brain, but didn’t expect to see scars on my head and see myself looking so droopy in a wheelchair. So the first time I saw myself in a mirror I almost threw up.

Now I remember most of my past, but have big problems making new memories. Therefore, I still can’t return to school or get a job. I couldn’t even return to 3^rd  grade because, I’m just now remembering how to add and subtract.  I wouldn’t even be able to read a book and write a book report.  My memory is that sketchy. But school and work is also out because— thanks to the crash—I have to wear diapers. NOT a good way to impress girls.

I’ve been in 10 different hospitals and two nursing homes—for a total of an entire year, and one month.

I ostensibly flunked out of rehab, because I wasn’t showing the hospitals— or the insurance company—that I was making any strides. I had to be tied into the bed because I was so agitated and would scratch my skin until it bled. The doctors declared that I was stuck in Stage Four of the coma—and might not ever get any better. When I was tied onto the bed rails, I would writhe up—as if possessed—like the girl in the Exorcist. I even threw up many times I was so agitated. They finally made me wear a cloth mitt over my hand, laced tightly at the wrist. If no one was around, I would bite at the laces so I could loosen the ties to enable me to scratch to bleeding again. When I was seated in the wheelchair, I would rub my back against the chair’s back, to try and scratch my back.

It turned out that—although I was in the agitated Stage Four—I was again allergic to a new medication. But I couldn’t tell anyone that it felt like an allergy. The brain injury had me behaving much too like a ferocious, primitive being.

Technically—from a medical viewpoint—I am still emerging from the coma—even though it has been so many years. I can read aloud all this stuff I wrote. But I cannot brush my teeth or wash my hair without someone reminding me—every time—how to do it, Technically, I’m at Stage Six, of the 10 stages, coming out of the coma. Stage Six means I’m dependent on external input, such as my parents or therapist, in order to do anything.

I cannot tolerate what my injured brain perceives to be unpleasantness— such as lying down for a MRI—or even having a blanket draped on me when in bed—unless you first explain what is going to happen. I’m better though. Two years ago, the brain injury made me screech like a tropical bird when I didn’t like something.   Pretty weird.

I still have little ability to retain new learning. Don’t bother teaching something as simple as learning a phone number; I wouldn’t be able to remember it. Like a really old person, my past memories show more depth and detail than recent memory. In a few hours I might forget I was here today. But if I’m given a bunch of clues—such as “high school”—I might be able to pull out the memory of speaking to you.

Since the crash I’ve had 24 surgeries. I had surgery on—get this—my eyeball—because my vision is double. Soon I’ll need surgery on the other eyeball.

I’ll probably need surgery on my thigh because I have developed a weird lump as hard as a rock. As surgeries are needed I’ll just put up with them— because I will do whatever it takes to get fully recovered. I spend much of the day in a hospital bed in the dining room of my parents’ house. All the furniture was removed to make room for the bed, two wheelchairs, a walker, and loads of other medical junk. But my friends all have their own apartments and cool jobs. For a long time my girlfriend was really supportive. But being faithful to someone in a hospital bed is almost as bad as if she’d been in the crash.  She had to move on.  It is hard because we were really perfect together.

My life isn’t what it used to be—or what I had planned. But I try not to think about losses.

I’m extremely thankful to have made it through this horrifying crash alive.  Instead of your being here, to listen to me, you'd have to visit the crash site.  Where I could have been just a little cross -- maybe made of some PVC pipes -- planted with fake flowers -- with my high school picture taped to it.  NOT how I'd want to be remembered.

But let me tell you—the most uncomfortable place to be—in the world—is a wheelchair. Picture sitting in the chair you’re in now—for 8 hours—never being able to get up.

Four really excellent ortho-surgeons said I will never walk again. That I should give up trying—especially because it hurt so much just to move my legs. All the specialists and experts tell you that your chances for full- recovery really stink. But they can’t factor in the person—because they don’t know the person—or the person’s will power.

 My goal is to be fully independent, capable of taking care of myself, going back to college, getting a job, traveling the world for work or play. Sound impossible? Well the goal to breathe without life support seemed impossible over 5 years ago.

 It’s an honor to have the chance to rehabilitate myself. I’ve even taught many  doctors and therapists not to give up.  For recovery I’ll have to offset brain injury deficits—like note taking, when I used to only listen.  And I’ll have to sweat a lot from my rehab exercises. But Kobe Bryant sweats, right?

I could say Life has screwed me, but if I said that—even once—I’d believe it.  And I’m not like George Costanza on Seinfeld, or like Homer Simpson.

 You probably want to know how I’ve gotten so much better, when the doctor said I’d be, like a vegetable. Believe it or not, I owe a lot to Comedy Central, The Daily Show, and The Simpsons. Laughter helps me stay in good spirits all day long—helps me stay positive—and now scientists are saying laughter helps heal the frontal lobes of the brain; where I had most of the brain injury.

When I came out of the coma, all I cared about was drinking water. That’s what your pet-dog thinks about. So I was pretty much like a simple animal.

I have worked with an occupational therapist, who helped me re-learn some activities of daily living—such as combing my hair and shaving. I also worked 3 days a week with a physical therapist—whom we called the physical terrorist. I’m able to stand for a fifteen minutes on my own—and walk, taking stiff-legged steps, using a four-pronged cane. I’m also working on stairs.

Insurance stopped paying for rehab, Now I work out at the YMCA, doing leg strengthening on exercise machines and sometimes work out in the pool—which helps my arm without the elbow. Last spring, I was determined to walk the survivor’s lap at Relay for Life—with my morn—a cancer survivor. So I worked and worked—until I could walk the quarter mile lap, using a cane. The lap took forever and was painful—but I did it!

Two times a week I continue to work with a speech therapist, to. re-learn, cognitive skills. It’s like doing preschool and high school all in one. Recently I went to a camp for brain injury survivors. Many of them are my age, but are stuck—for life—in nursing homes. Tragically, they have not recovered anymore than I did when doctors sent me—that first year—to a nursing home. So you can see how crucial it is to recovery to always work at building new neuro pathways—by re-learning—and by pushing yourself.

I try to keep my brain as active as possible—although a brain injury compels you to stare—to fall into a daze. It is as if the injury sabotages the brain’s desire to pay attention.

For example, it took two years before I could read again. But, due to exhaustion and poor mental power, I could only read a few sentences—and did that for about a year. Two years later I began to read books.  Which helps re-gain explicit learning.

As for the analytical level—sorry teachers—it’s video games that have been really great for brain recovery. They help me problem-solve because they require a different kind of thinking from the thought process I use in my currently secluded life, or when reading.

Movies have been exceptionally great, too. The complicated plots and fast action of say, The Bourne identity, help my brain re-learn to assimilate complex issues. Even the convoluted and jumbled plots of The Simpsons TV shows help me re-learn thinking, on many levels.

Sometimes the simplest activities are the hardest. Like getting my brain to have me put toothpaste on the toothbrush.  I loose focus, forget what to do, or actually get scared of failing. The way to maximize the brain recovery for forgotten tasks is to do them over, and over, and over, like getting proficient at shooting foul shots.

Full recovery is up to me. And so is re-gaining independence. I could move to a nursing home like a ninety year old—whose brain has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’—as those other survivors have been made to do. I could be angry at everyone who can walk. But that would be as absurd as being angry at Kobe Bryant because he’s a better basketball player than I could ever be. Anger is exhausting and will stall my recovery. I need all the strength I have to re-learn to walk—to re-learn to put toothpaste on my toothbrush—and to get out of diapers.

I know the impossible can be done. I’ve already done it, It doesn’t take rocket science to overcome the impossible. It just takes something available to each and all of us:   A   Positive   Mental   Attitude.

Thanks for listing to me. Being able to talk today—believe it not—helps built those new pathways for my brain. So thanks for the help. Oh, by the way...

The moral of my story is:  Bad driving and car crashes are only exciting in high budget, action movies.