When people suffer bone-breaking, brain-clouding injuries from crashes, it might seem natural to avoid a quick return to the vehicle or activity involved. But often it’s just the opposite. Many recovering patients sustain themselves with visions of strapping on parachutes or revving up cycles. Others overcome their fear so they can move forward with their lives. Below, a trauma rehabilitation expert and determined survivors talk about getting back in the saddle.
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Benjamin Anderson, a 36-year-old U.S. Marine Corps veteran, describes his 2005 recreational skydiving accident in technical terms. The Richmond, Virginia, resident experienced a “downplane configuration,” he says, with his main and reserve parachutes deployed and separating at about 1,000 feet above ground — leaving him flying downward instead of forward.
Anderson crashed into a 40-foot evergreen. His reserve parachute got caught in the tree trunk, slowing his descent somewhat and suspending him below the branches. “It swung me like a pendulum into the ground, head first,” he says. The impact was severe. Anderson ended up in a coma, from which he gradually emerged over the next few days. He also suffered relatively mild but chronic lower-body injuries.
It took about six months for Anderson to recover from the sensation of everything being a dream to fully processing reality. Nevertheless, he says, he was placed on light-duty status a week after his crash. “When I was back at work seven days later, my thought was: If I’m good enough to work, then I’m good enough to play,” he says. “I was anxious to get back in air.”
A Challenging Process
Many patients can’t remember anything from the period before the crash through their initial admission to a shock trauma unit, says occupational therapist Kim Goodman. She’s the therapy manager for the spinal cord injury, multitrauma and comprehensive medical rehabilitation unit at the University of Maryland Rehabilitation & Orthopaedic Institute, where patients recover once stable enough.
“When patients come through the doors, we have them on a schedule for three hours of daily therapy interventions,” says Goodman, an occupational therapist. “So we get them moving very quickly.” Overcoming fatigue, getting used to potentially life-altering injuries and building activity tolerance are all part of the process. Pain makes the recovery more challenging.
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Charlie Gittins, 60, an attorney and owner of Blue Ridge Skydiving Adventures in New Market, Virginia, crash-landed in a baseball field during the 2012 Memorial Day weekend. Although relieved he could still move his feet and hands, the pop he heard in his back was ominous.
Gittins was treated at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. With several broken vertebrae, his spinal injuries were excruciating and he needed strong pain medication. Hospital staff encouraged him to get up and walk. But a different source of pain in his leg made that nearly impossible. Lower-body X-rays didn’t reveal what later proved to be a hidden break of his tibia, or shinbone.
At home, where Gittins couldn’t even walk to the bathroom, his then-girlfriend, now-wife took care of him as his leg failed to improve. He insisted on further evaluation, he says, and an MRI scan eventually revealed the break.
Gittins was careful in his return to skydiving, waiting five-and-a-half of the six months his doctor advised.
The Emotional Aftermath
After major accidents, many patients work through psychological and grief issues while working to heal their bodies.
In a tragic 2009 crash, a speeding car broadsided the vehicle in which Nicole Lawrence, then 18, was a passenger along with her roommates. Lawrence, a freshman at Penn State University, was rushed to the nearest trauma center with critical injuries. She underwent emergency abdominal surgery and within two days was flown to Baltimore to the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, part of the University of Maryland Medical System. Another passenger, Lawrence’s good friend and fellow cheerleader, was killed.
On the rehabilitation unit, Lawrence had to process the enormous repercussions of the crash. While the emotional pain of losing her friend was the worst, her multiple physical injuries were formidable. “The orthopedic injuries were hardest in terms of rehab,” says Lawrence, who suffered five broken ribs and a fractured pelvis. Scariest, she says, was learning she suffered a stroke of the cerebellum, affecting her balance. Her abdominal injuries healed relatively quickly, but the scar bothered her.
Lawrence’s personal goal was to return to athletics. The risk of aggravating her pelvic injuries with blade landings put her previous competitive ice skating out of the picture. However, to honor her friend, she says, “I had to be involved in cheerleading in some way, because it was so important to her.”
The thought of getting behind the wheel of a car was frightening. But Lawrence had places to go, including classes, cheerleading practice and physical therapy appointments, so she couldn’t avoid driving indefinitely. “I made myself do it,” she says. She continued cheerleading until graduation and now volunteers with the Trauma Survivors Network to encourage others who are rebuilding their lives.
Back in the Saddle
Rehabilitation teams work with patients to achieve meaningful goals. “We always try things we know are motivating to them,” Goodman says. And that could be returning to whatever injured them in the first place.
“I’ve had several gentlemen who sustained an amputation due to a motorcycle accident,” she says. “Even before they were discharged from inpatient rehab, they had already contacted someone to modify their motorcycle or get a type of motorcycle they would then be able to drive with one limb.” There’s no hesitation, she says. “Usually it’s a piece of their lifestyle and something they were very passionate about before.”
In 2004, in his early 60s, Roland Henry of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, had a front-tire blowout while riding his vintage Italian motor scooter. He was forced to crawl off the secondary road to avoid traffic.
Henry, a longtime member of the Three Mile Island Scooter Club, says not wearing a helmet was his biggest mistake. Although the accident led to a severe head laceration and brain injury, he escaped harm to the rest of his body. He remembers little about the accident or what doctors told him in the immediate aftermath, although it comes back in flashes.
[See: 10 Lessons From Empowered Patients.]
Henry had to relearn how to ride. “It was so scary when I first got on that damn thing,” he says. It took about six months before he felt he was riding well. Although Henry had to give up the scooter racing he loved, he anticipates riding indefinitely. “You don’t want any accident to be a life-changing event,” he says. “You gotta get back on the horse.”
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Getting Back in Action After a Major Crash originally appeared on usnews.com
