A dad’s story: One family’s long road to recovery

Unlike many other types of injuries, a traumatic brain injury leads to many struggles on many different fronts as we have come to find out. I would like to share the steps we have taken, good and bad, so that anyone else who has to travel this road will have an idea of how to make their way.

That is one thing that has always frustrated me: being out there trying to figure out the road ourselves.

We are a family of four. Erin and I have been married for 27 years. We have two children, Jason (18) and Kiana (21). Kiana suffered her TBI in a car accident on Aug. 27, 2005. She and Erin were on their way to school for a basketball open gym when another car slammed into theirs broadside. The force of the impact shattered Kiana’s face from her eyes up. She was 11 years old.

That day turned all of our lives upside down. Jason, who was a happy kid in third grade at the time, had to stay with multiple friends and family as we spent time with Kiana at Hershey Medical Center. Kiana was a good student and a successful athlete. She played both softball and basketball and competed in horse-riding competitions. But she has spent the past 10 years trying to work her way back, a struggle that still goes on and, of course, has its ups and downs.

Kiana had to relearn everything. In her 84 days in Hershey, she went the full spectrum from not being supposed to survive to coming home right before Thanksgiving and her birthday, then going to Schrieber Pediatric for physical, speech and occupational therapy.

We are 10 years into this journey, and, yes, there were and are some really tall hurdles to get over for all of us. But God has been so good to us. Kiana continues to improve and fight to get back what was lost.

If you’d like to check out more information on her journey, please feel free to check out her story on CarePages.com (registration required), an online community for visitors to share the challenges, hopes and triumphs of anyone facing a life-changing health event. We started this page only a few days after her accident and have continued it to this day.

We have learned many things along the way, and I have a few topics in mind for future blog posts, including:

  • Living with the aftermath of a traumatic brain injury
  • Navigating the school system when you have a child with a physical and mental challenge
  • Advice for parents whose kids are transitioning to adulthood
If you have questions or suggestions for topics to cover, I’d love to hear from you. Contact me at keeya@epix.net.

Troy Brown and his family live in Gap.