Rebirth, Recovery, and Renewal
Hello there. My name is Timothy Davis. This is the tale of the most difficult, yet most rewarding event and time of my life. Because of these events I have gone through very many hardships. These events also helped me accomplish so many things that would have not been attained otherwise.
On Sunday, December 20th, 2014, I was in a severe car wreck. I was driving home with my friend, now cousin, where it is ‘guestimated’ that I fell asleep behind the wheel. Many things are unclear about that morning, but the only thing that any of us know for sure was that I was driving in front of Burks Branch Baptist church at about 0530 in the morning and I went off the road with my back right wheel and ended up overcorrecting and hitting a tree between 50 and 60 miles an hour. The wreck totaled my cousin’s car, he was thrown into my shoulder, and fractured his left orbital bone in multiple places.
We were found at about 0730 in the morning, the police were called, and I had to be extracted from the vehicle by the fire department in what turned out to be the longest vehicular extraction in Shelby County history. I was then airlifted to the University of Louisville Hospital. To add insult to injury, this was the first time that I had flown in a helicopter and I do not even remember it. Even though I do not remember the flight, I did receive a pretty big souvenir from it. I received an emergency tracheostomy in the helicopter to aid in breathing because my right lung had collapsed.
As a result of the wreck, I sustained many other injuries. I had multiple fractured ribs, spinal and neck ligaments, multiple fractures to the left side of my skull, breaks to the left side of my hip, and severe breaks to my left collarbone. I also had many internal injuries to add to my multiple breaks and fractures. In addition to the collapsed right lung, I also had sustained trauma to my colon and spleen. On top of these injuries, I sustained a severe traumatic brain injury. Even though the main damage was to the frontal lobe and right side of my brain, the doctors informed my parents that I had sustained what was considered a ‘total brain injury’. My father described the damage to me like this, “Imagine that your brain has 1,000 connections in it, because of your wreck, you broke 979 of those connections.”
Because of all this, I was in a coma for about two months (7 and a half weeks). Technically, I was still in a coma with lesser brain function for some time after that. My mother stayed in (slept and showered) the hospital for most of those two months. For the days and/or nights my mother was not there, my father and his fiancée (now my stepmom) would be at the hospital. They did this so that there would be family there whenever I woke up.
After I was at the University of Louisville hospital for about two weeks, I was transferred to Frazier Rehab Institute in Louisville to complete my medical care and begin my rehabilitation. While I was there, I had a truly amazing medical team. There was Cory Child, my Physical Therapist, Debbie Broderick, my Occupational Therapist, and Jennifer Belden, my speech therapist. My medical team was truly amazing and incredibly dedicated to my recovery.
After I was at the Frazier Rehab Institute for about 5 weeks, I was transferred to the live-in rehab facility, Louisville East in a brain injury recovery wing entitled Heartland Rehab. Once there, I again had a physical therapist (Jenna), an occupational therapist, (Jimmy), and a speech therapist (Loreneth). I also had an amazing nurse who took a personal interest in my recovery (Connie Jakes). I would not be where I am in life or made the accomplishments that I have without all their amazing help.
While I was there, my Dad and (step) Mom got married. During their wedding, they came up with a truly amazing ring exchange ceremony. For my Mom’s ring, my youngest step-sister, Isabella (8), passed the ring to my step-brother, Christian (14), who passed the ring to my little brother, Leef (18), who passed the ring to me (23), and I passed the ring to my older step-sister, Angel (23), who handed the ring to my father to put on my mother’s finger, beautifully illustrating the blending of our two families.
After this amazing experience, I went back to Heartland to complete my 4 to 5-month stay there. When I was released back home from rehab, I began attending Frazier Outpatient Rehab, an ADT (Adult Day Training) program. While there, I also had Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy (Are you noticing a pattern here?) I apologize, but I do not remember their names. I was there for around 2 years before I switched to the Capacity Care Day Program where I spent about 3 years working on building myself up to where I was able to attend college. I would participate in Speech and Occupational Therapy where my therapists (Mary Katherine – My Speech Therapist and Emily – my Occupational Therapist) aided me in moving my life forward after my brain injury. In speech therapies, Mary Katherine and I focused on my goal to become accredited as a Motivational Public Speaker by having me create, edit, and present motivational speeches at Louisville East in the Heartland wing once a month and create, edit, and present a Motivational speech and corroborating PowerPoint presentation every two weeks at Capacity Care. In my occupational therapies, Emily would help me to recover and improve both my cognitive and physical states by conducting both physical and cognitive exercises.
After attending therapy at Capacity Care for about 3 years I was accepted into the Pre-Alpha program at Carl D. Perkins Vocational Training Center in Thelma, Kentucky to prepare me to attend Big Sandy Community and Technical College in Prestonsburg, Kentucky. Then, after everything that had happened to me because of my accident, I was accepted into college at Big Sandy to pursue an Associate’s Degree of Arts to aid in my pursuit of accreditation as a Public Motivational speaker.
Once I began attending college at Big Sandy, I became a member of the Student Government Association. In my first year (2019-2020), I began as a seated council member of the SGA, which meant that I was able to vote and contribute to the well-being of our student body. In my second year (2020-2021), I was selected as the student body treasurer, which meant that I was responsible for setting up fund earning opportunities to enhance the student body budget to do such things as set up student aid programs and construct leisure activities to draw student interest in our college’s success and well-being.
Unfortunately, during this year, the Coronavirus hit the country hard, and the student body was sent away from campus to complete the year with online schooling. I did not enjoy online schooling at all. I greatly value in-person instruction and retain new information more effectively this way. Not only did I have to complete my academic year online, but I also had to fulfill my duties as student body treasurer remotely. I must have had more than 20 hours of phone conversations that year concerning our student body financial status, future spending allotments, fundraising opportunities, and leisure activities for the students after we returned to campus that observed enhanced safety precautions while simultaneously capturing the interest of our student body.
During the summer of 2020, I expressed interest in running for the position of student body vice president. I asked the SGA staff representative if she would support my run for the office and, shockingly, she said no. “Why?”, I asked, “I have been more involved in the student body’s well-being than was required. I feel like I could help so much more as vice president. She responded with, “I know that you have been, but I am still not going to support your pursuit of the vice presidency, because you are going to be our next president.”
I kicked it into high gear for my final year of college (2021-2022). I took a full load of classes, actively participated in my different therapies, and fulfilled my responsibilities as the student body president with great vigor. I was informed by the librarian that I did more legwork and was more involved with the student body’s wellbeing than she had seen a Student Body president do in over 24 years. As a collegiate student taking a full load of courses, the student body president, and a TBI survivor fully engaged in my therapies, I graduated June 19th of 2022 with an Associates Degree of Arts. I don’t tell you this to ‘toot my own horn’, I am telling you this to show you that you NEVER have to feel limited or restricted because of your brain injury or any other disability you may have.
In the summer after graduating college (While completing my Associates Degree of Arts), I was accepted into the Occupational Therapy Assistant accreditation course at the downtown campus of Jefferson Community and Technical College. Whilst in that program, I learned so much about caring for clients with physical, mental, and emotional impairments. I was instructed on initiating and assisting with evaluations, treatments, formulating different therapeutic activities, and instructing/leading such activities to assist clients in reaching their therapeutic and personal goals.
I worked with clients at many different places for my fieldwork. Locations such as Mary & Elizabeth Hospital, Down Syndrome of Louisville, Fern Creek Highview United Ministries, and Bridgehaven Mental Health Services. I fulfilled several responsibilities while working at these fieldwork locations. Responsibilities ranging from information gathering associated with initial and post-surgical evaluations, aiding clients in both cognitive and physical exercises, assisting in meal preparations and serving, craft participation and completion of arts and crafts activities, and many more activities in pursuit of improving one’s situation and independence.
Unfortunately, my pursuit of the goal of becoming an Occupational Therapy Assistant did not turn out to be fruitful. Alternatively, while being enrolled in this program, I was able to gain numerous skills and knowledge needed to aid in the recovery and self-improvement towards reaching the personal and occupational goals of clients with their recovery. Thus, I was gifted with many tools and strategies that I will be able to utilize to help the most clients to the best of my ability in whichever future career I go into.
My goal with these hopeful career choices was to help as many brain injury survivors as I could hold onto hope at a time in their recovery when I, ashamedly, had very nearly lost mine. At the time of my wreck, I was living a very self-serving life (lying to my parents and using all the things that were given to help me selfishly and unappreciatively). In opposition, since the wreck, I have solely focused on improving myself to aid others with their issues. This is why I view my wreck as one of the best things to ever happen to me. I always jokingly say,” The old me died that morning in the wreck and the new, improved, more focused me was born when I awoke.’
I leave you with these parting words of encouragement that have helped me through so many different challenges since my brain injury;
No matter how detrimental the circumstances, you can always find a way to improve yourself and your circumstances if you are just willing to put in the necessary work because only you have the power to improve yourself.
