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A Walk in The Park
by Kyle McCann
I've spent the last ten years reclaiming my mind. Ten years ago I was
brutally attacked in Central Park, leaving me brain-injured. Recovery
statistics didn't look good. With excellent medical care, family love, and
my own hard work, though, my brain rewired itself to compensate for the
parts that atrophied. The ten-year recovery period for severe traumatic
brain injury will end for me in June. Aside from my epilepsy and dry eyes,
I've recovered.
On June 4, 1996, when I was 32 years old and living on West 57th Street, I
took an afternoon walk in Central Park. I had just taught a piano lesson.
Newspaper articles, not my memory, tell the story. My walk took me to the
area near Central Park West and the West 80s known as Summit Rock. A man
pushed me down and bashed my head along the Belgian blocks bordering the
macadam path. He tried to rape me, took my wallet, and left the Park. I was
unconscious, my right eye had swollen shut, the bones above that eye were
shattered, I was bleeding profusely from my ear and nose, and my brain had
begun to swell. The criminal, caught June 13, was one John Royster.
I had severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), which happens when the brain is
battered about inside the skull enough to induce coma. Fate was then on my
side. A dog walker sought help, the EMS paramedic drove me to New York
Presbyterian Hospital, and I was treated by a preeminent neurosurgeon. Dr.
Jam Ghajar follows a medical protocol for severe TBI that saved my life.
Patients who survive this injury are often disabled, physically and/or
cognitively. A year before my attack, Dr. Ghajar and his nationwide Brain
Trauma Foundation published an answer to what they saw lacking in
neurosurgery- a scientifically based treatment protocol for every phase of
severe brain-trauma care. I spent a month in the hospital, my coma ending
after the first week, and had five brain operations. In one, Dr. Ghajar
temporarily removed my forehead bone to make room for my swelling brain.
In July I was admitted to the Kessler Institute of Rehabilitation, in East
Orange, NJ. The brain doesn't awaken all at once from a coma. Upon admission
I was confused, agitated and restless, needing to be tethered to my bed and
wheelchair, and had aphasia, a brain disorder that had me speaking
nonsensically. I relearned how to walk, eat, and speak, and was helped
cognitively and emotionally by a neuropsychologist. I had expected
difficulties with attention, concentration, memory, and language processing.
No doctor can predict the extent to which a severe TBI patient will
recover.
I did not (do not) remember being attacked. When told other things about
myself, I'd debate. This is classic severe TBI mentality. To the patient,
who can't remember being injured, they're still the independent, capable
person they were before. I had almost no short-term memory. I couldn't
recall my parents' daily visits. My parents, though retired, brought to my
care insights from their respective careers-my father, the factual approach
of an engineer, my mother, the intuitiveness of a special education teacher.
Seeing that my walking during physical therapy left me more alert, they
started walking with me during non-therapy times. My walking improved; in
late July I refused to use a wheelchair.
On August 4 I returned to New York Presbyterian Hospital for Dr. Ghajar to
replace my forehead bone and reconstructive surgeon Dr. Gregory LaTrenta to
repair my nasal fracture and reconstruct my right eye orbit. Because the
upper orbital bones had been shattered, my right eye was pushed forward in
its socket, preventing my eyelid from closing, and my eyebrows did not line
up. I returned to Kessler, my progress quickened, and I was released August
23. Of my recovery speed, the head of Kessler said he had seen nothing like
it in his 35 years in the field. Dr. Ghajar attributed it to the promptness
and quality of my medical care, my youth, and my determination. Surely the
people of all religious denominations who prayed, responding to my mother's
quoted request, are also to thank.
After Kessler I lived with my parents in New Jersey, where I continued to
relearn what TBI had taken. Encouraged and guided by my parents, I began
with basic skills and progressed. In my out-patient therapies at Kessler, I
saw I had a "flat affect," always deferring to others, and that my mind
lacked depth. I met in September with the lead detective and the two
assistant district attorneys who would prosecute Royster, asked intelligent
questions, and grasped nothing. At home I played piano, wrote, taught piano,
and in 1997 went to Rutgers University to get a Master's degree in music-all
challenging and thus invaluable. Earlier that year I developed epilepsy, a
condition of having seizures, which is common after TBI. Dr. Douglas Labar,
director of New York Presbyterian Hospital's Comprehensive Epilepsy Center,
prescribed anti-epileptic medication, which I'll need for life.
Things are good. Having jumped physical, cognitive, and psychological
hurdles, I have sharpened insight and deeper perspective. I now have a
loving husband and daughter. Who cares that my scalp is scarred, my eyes
don't tear, and I have epilepsy?