Crash and Burn
July 29, 2018
A certain adrenaline rush can accompany nearly losing your life. For a while, what was dull can appear brighter and the miracle of life is much easier to see wherever you look. After nearly being killed by a car while on his bicycle, Sam truly believed he had been given a second chance at life, and that his survival was a miracle. Sam was eager to embrace life with renewed inspiration and hope. After all, he was already living out many of his dreams before his accident – he was the proud single parent of his brilliant and talented son, he provided a healthy and stable home for the two of them, he ran a successful family business he had started from scratch on his own, and he was in the best physical shape of his life because he was able to nurture his passion for competitive cycling. Now having survived a near death experience and discovered the love of his life, Sam discovered a new appreciation for his former life and only wanted to add to it.
So, as many with traumatic brain injury do, Sam tried his best and with full force to jump back into life as he knew it. What Sam could not account for, however, was that things were not going to work the same way they did before. As a result, Sam followed a quite typical pattern for many with traumatic brain injury, repeating a cycle of trying to do as he did before the accident, and then crashing into failure because his brain wouldn’t work the way it did before the accident. But Sam did not know that is what was going on, so he kept trying and trying and trying. After all, nearly everyone around Sam kept insisting that he “stay positive,” “don’t quit,” and just “attack it,” as though if he just remembered these inspirational quotes that would be the end of his injury. Not only are these sayings on the top lists of things not to say to a brain-injured person, but “staying positive” is not something within the control of someone whose brain is broken, and notions of “don't quit” and “just attack it” were exactly what were causing Sam to repeatedly crash and burn.
For example, within 3 months of the accident, Sam eagerly got back on his bike, determined not to let his injuries keep him from riding. And, at first, it was great. He saw himself within grasp of regaining what little bit of conditioning he thought he had lost due to being incapacitated with a broken neck for 3 months. His rides started off strong and long and in no time he was building back into 30-50 mile rides. Before he knew it, he had the confidence to enter into a competition that would require riding a minimum of 132.5 miles within a 24 hour period, set to occur in month 8 after his accident. Meanwhile, having introduced his new wife to cycling, he was also set to fulfill a dream of his and ride with her in a century race the following month. This particular race was one he had participated in twice before and had wanted to have someone to share it with. Now he finally did. But things did not go as planned.
At the first competition, though Sam pushed through and completed the full minimum number of miles, it was with several emotional breakdowns along the way, including some that almost prevented him from beginning in the first place. Having never been that bothered by night time riding before, Sam was now terrified of the dark and it so happened that he needed to ride at least 78 miles of the 132.5 miles in the dark in order to complete the minimum mileage on time. Meanwhile, his old man had volunteered to bring his son Brady to be there for the race. What Sam could not identify at the time, but saw much later, was the stress his old man’s presence added to the whole event, which certainly played a role in the pressure Sam felt and that drove him to uncontrollable sobbing while riding. Sam finished, though, against all odds, and that race, more than any before gave Sam hope that all would be well.
The following week was the ride Sam and his wife had been training for; however, despite all the training and progress that had been made, the couple almost did not make it to the event because Sam had been unable to sleep the night before and several nights leading up to the event (insomnia and severely disruptive sleep patterns are common with brain injury). Although they eventually arrived at the race hours late, within a few miles of riding, it became clear they would have to cut the ride much shorter than planned—Sam was not going to be able to make a century ride that day.
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That same month, Sam and his wife had entered into a local city-wide riding competition being put on by Bike Houston and the Energy Corridor District. The purpose of the competition was to promote cycling and healthy living and encourage participants to rack up as many miles as possible within a month. Because Sam's first franchise was in the Energy Corridor District, and he now lived there too, he felt a connection with the competition and he and his wife threw themselves into it. Again, Sam started off strong and actually finished with the leading mileage out of all males in the competition, but with each ride Sam became more and more paralyzed by fear that he would have a breakdown too far away from home to be able to safely return. This fear got to the point that by the 3rd week into the competition, Sam was only riding in their neighborhood, too afraid to leave. Riding 30-40 miles a day in a neighborhood with approximately 8 blocks in it had become a perverse contortion on the freedom Sam used to feel by riding his bike all over the city.
The pattern of powering forward to only then fall down was not just happening with cycling. Four months after the accident, at his mother's insistence, Sam had thrust himself back into trying to run his business full-time. By month 8, Sam had experienced several occasions in which he was not able to go to work—a phenomenon that never happened before the accident. Though he was physically able to walk, run, and ride a bike, Sam’s brain was far from healed. Uncontrollable flooding thoughts in his brain, coupled with lack of control over his emotions, as well as having completely lost any filter made it impossible for him to face customers, and his was a customer-service driven business. And this was on top of excruciating blinding headaches, and having so little energy that he would find himself falling asleep while at work. But Sam would try, time and time again.
Meanwhile, Sam’s son Brady had begun visiting his estranged mother for the first time in nearly a year, as well as spending time with Sam’s old man, with whom they had never had a consistent relationship. This combination quickly began to have its effects on Brady, whose sweet and loving nature was being replaced with a sour, angry, and disrespectful reproach for his dad and stepmom.
By the end of month 9, Sam was breaking down under the effects of the repeated attempts to seize his old life back and the repeated failures caused by his brain injury, and, as is common with brain injury survivors who have experienced similar heart-breaking disappointment over the loss of their old lives, depression had also invited itself to the table.
It was at this point that the accumulation of the symptoms and the stress began to crack through the foundation of the family. On one night during month 9, Brady began to throw a tantrum over not wanting to have to complete his homework. When Sam told him he would lose his martial arts privileges if he kept up the attitude, Brady began putting his fists up as though to instigate a physical fight with Sam. Sam did the only thing he could think to do in the moment and grabbed his son in his arms to prevent him from striking. Brady then pulled one of his martial arts moves and threw his full weight into throwing himself down on the ground. It was around this point that Sam’s old man walked into their home, coming by to pick up Brady to go to martial arts. Sam picked Brady up off the floor and walked him over to the old man to show him how out of control Brady had become. Instead of taking the adult route and seeing this situation for what it was – a kid out of control and his parent trying to discipline him - the old man immediately began yelling at Sam, as though Sam had done something wrong. Meanwhile, Brady hugged the old man with one arm while clenching his fist at his father with the other. Though Sam called attention to what was going on, even pointing out that Brady was clenching his fist at him, the old man treated Sam as though he was in a dispute with his brother, and continued to yell at Sam. The message this sent to Brady was loud and clear – the old man didn’t view Sam with any respect, and neither should Brady.
Then came Halloween night. Brady and his stepmom had started out the night with fun and festivity, both of them looking forward to giving out candy together for the first time. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to either of them, Sam was being pushed to the brink. In addition to the nerve-rattling effect of the doorbell ringing, Sam had all the pressure in the world on his shoulders as he faced the last night of the month long competition he had been striving just to complete. What had started off as a fun way to get out on his bike every day had turned into hell, as he realized he was unable to even leave the neighborhood. But no one knew that. Sam was just trying to click off the last 40 miles of the month so that he could have at least one riding goal fulfilled since his accident—he was 40 miles away from 1,300 miles for the month, and he desperately wanted to reach it. On his way towards the front door, however, Sam heard what had become an argument between Brady and his stepmom. Hearing Brady yelling at her in his bedroom, without any thought, Sam bolted up the stairs to confront his son about the disrespectful behavior. Though he would have addressed disrespectful behavior before the accident, bolting up the stairs in that fashion was not something pre-accident Sam would have done. Instead of listening to his father, however, Brady became more defiant and the conflict quickly escalated until he was yelling at Sam. Not able to stop his impulsive reaction, Sam reached out and smacked Brady on the side of the head, much like the way Red Foreman on “That 70s Show” would smack his son, and told him to shut up. Immediately realizing that he had lost control, Sam hid himself downstairs in his room, where he stayed for days, unable to leave out of shame over what had happened. Later that night, Brady’s stepmom explained to Brady that his father’s reaction was because of the brain injury and tried to console the boy. Within a few days, Sam and Brady reconciled, and the family seemed to have recovered.
As weeks passed, however, Brady’s behavior worsened. He would spend every other weekend at his mother’s playing video games and binge watching Netflix into all hours of the night and sleeping until noon or later during the day. This began to make his time at home challenging, since at home he had rules, a schedule, and limited videogame and television time, which Brady quickly began to express great displeasure with. On Sundays after a weekend at his mother’s, he would come home at 6:00 p.m. unbathed, unfed, having done no homework, and downright hostile in attitude. Peppered in were weekly visits with Brady’s grandfather, who would not bother to try and even speak to Sam when he would come pick up the boy. Brady became curiously secretive about the time he would spend with his grandfather and within weeks he began instigating arguments at home, blurting out things to his stepmom or his dad that could only have come from the so-called adults who were otherwise surrounding him when he was not at home.
By month 10, Sam’s bike rides quickly dropped from daily to every few days, to every couple of weeks, until by the time he was recognizing the one year anniversary of his accident, they had stopped altogether. By this time, Sam’s health was as bad as it had ever been. It was also around the anniversary of his accident that Brady again acted up against his father. Contrary to the materials Sam had asked Brady to read about brain injury and what to do and not to do when a family member has brain injury, it was almost as though Brady was testing Sam to see how much he could push him before Sam would lose his temper. In the midst of a discussion with his dad and stepmom, Brady became belligerent and disrespectful. Quite predictably, since aggression towards a brain injury survivor only breeds aggression by the brain injury survivor, Sam lost it and before anyone could do anything to prevent it, Sam was holding Brady up against the refrigerator yelling at him to stop being disrespectful. Quickly realizing what was happening, and with Sam’s wife’s help, Sam let go and again retreated to his room, defeated at another failure his brain injury had brought him.
Desperate for help, the couple continued to look for new doctors and options for specialized care for traumatic brain injury survivors. At one point, around month 13 after the accident, the couple thought they had found what would be Sam’s salvation, a center specializing in treating TBI survivors. With top neurologists, psychologists, and physical and occupational therapists on staff, the couple thought Sam would finally get the treatment he needed. So, Sam submitted to an in-depth evaluation confirming his brain injury and eligibility for medical treatment there, and the couple toured the facility. Two realizations quickly emerged during this experience. First, it was quickly apparent that this was exactly the kind of place that could give Sam the medical attention that could really help him. Second, the personnel were shocked that Sam had not been admitted to such a center immediately following his release from the hospital, which is when they said most patients are taken to centers like theirs. So, the second realization was how little proper care Sam had been given immediately following the accident. Seeing that the center had all of the medical and psychological support Sam would need, the couple was truly hopeful in a way they had not been in a long time. But Sam’s hopes were dashed when he discovered the center would require overnight stays for a minimum of three weeks. Being gone for three weeks was not an option for Sam—he knew Brady’s mother would use that against him in family court, if for no other reason than to try and humiliate Sam. He couldn’t risk losing his son. Even if he had been able to overcome that fear, however, it turns out insurance somehow covered the facility, but, oddly enough, it would not cover any of the neurologists working there, meaning Sam’s insurance would not have covered the treatment anyway. Sam went from finally having a shred of hope to completely hopeless. But he couldn’t talk to anyone about it other than his wife, for fear of the information getting into the wrong hands. Meanwhile, as he sunk into hopeless despair, Sam’s world shrunk even further as he found himself unable to leave his room, let alone leave the house.
In the midst of this most recent disappointment, Sam and his wife continued to struggle to find help, but it seemed everywhere they looked they found more closed doors. Meanwhile, Brady’s conduct had worsened, and in addition to refusing to do homework because he wanted to play video games instead, Brady was abusing his phone privileges and lying about that as well. By month 13 after the accident, things escalated again, this time around Brady’s phone. Brady had been dishonest and disrespectful and, as a result, kept losing his phone privileges. Increasingly becoming more and more hostile, Brady instigated more and more fights with his stepmom. Most of them she handled without even letting Sam know the extent of them, knowing that Sam really did not need the additional stress. However, on one night, an argument escalated and Brady’s yelling had reached high enough volume to carry across the house and downstairs into Sam’s bathroom. Acting on impulse, Sam ran out of his room to see what was going on. This time around, Sam was doing all he could to stay downstairs, not wanting to lose control like he had on Halloween. But this time, having had several more weekends at his mother’s and several more visits with Sam’s old man, who had clearly shown his disrespect towards Sam, Brady was emboldened with vigor and spite towards his dad. Standing upstairs staring down at Sam, clenching his fists as though he was about to jump down the rails and knock him out, Brady screamed and yelled at Sam. And, predictably as any person with brain injury in the face of aggressive hostility can understand, Sam lost it. He ran up the stairs and held Brady down on the bed, yelling at him to stop. Sam’s wife pulled Sam off, but it was too late. Sam had lost control and the shame he felt over it pushed him even farther down.
By this point, Sam and his wife had been educating themselves on brain injury and realized that what was happening to Sam was actually pretty common with brain injury survivors. For months they had been asking Sam’s mom and Sam’s old man to please talk to Brady when they were with him about brain injury and what he should and should not be doing. But time and time again, these situations that were perfectly avoidable, kept on being presented, and time and time again it became obvious that Sam’s parents were not at all talking to Brady the way they had promised they would because if they had, then things would have changed. But they did not.
Finally, on the weekend before Spring Break—month 14 after his accident—Sam had had enough. Once again, Brady was being disrespectful and angry over issues having to do with his phone. He had lost his phone privileges once again and Sam had caught him in several bold-faced lies. Desperate for help, and in the midst of another uncontrollable emotional breakdown in his room, Sam texted his old man and asked him to come take Brady for a few days. In perhaps one of the most tragically ironic statements, the old man told him “no judgment here,” and came to pick up the boy. But by the time the old man had Brady in his car, Sam had seen on Brady’s phone more evidence of Brady having lied to him, and he completely lost it. Had he not had a brain injury, Sam certainly would not have said some of the things he said. But he did have a brain injury, which meant he had no filter, and therefore he said all sorts of things he did not mean in the moment. When Brady yelled at him over speaker phone from the old man’s car that he liked his mother and step father better than Sam and his stepmom, Sam screamed back. Instead of doing something to calm everyone down and reinforce a sense of respect for Brady’s father, the old man again turned on Sam and told him “you’re about to go past the point of no return here.” Again, the old man’s complete lack of respect for Sam was so evident as to be instructional for Brady, who had no hopes by this point of showing his own father any respect in the moment.
Notably, Brady did not want to go to his grandfather’s and when he left he pleaded to know how long he would stay there. The last thing he wanted was to spend Spring Break over there. However, within days, the old man had bought Brady a phone, even though Brady was grounded from having a phone at home. And, presumably the old man was also giving Brady as much time playing video games and watching TV as he wanted, so Brady may have been won over relatively quickly, though we do not yet know because of what happened afterwards. As Sam tried his best to pull himself together and take advantage of the quiet time to try and heal, he also tried to stay abreast of how Brady was doing. But getting information about Brady was becoming more and more difficult, and it began to feel as though Sam’s old man was purposefully evading keeping Sam informed.
Eventually, when it became far too suspicious to ignore, Sam challenged his father on the lack of communication and demanded that Brady be returned home. Sam’s father responded with belligerence and belittling, as was typical of the old man whenever Sam had challenged him in the past. Unsurprisingly, Sam became even more upset and it showed in his text messages to the old man. In retrospect, Sam and his wife should have gone over to the old man’s place and picked Brady up that night. But at the time they did not realize that not going over there would mean Sam would never see his son again.
The next day, a Monday, Sam’s wife was prepared to go pick up Brady from school at the end of the day. Foolishly believing she could trust Sam’s mother, since Sam’s mother was still helping with Sam’s business at this time, Sam’s wife let Sam’s mother know about their plan. Not long after, Sam’s mother relayed the message to Sam’s wife that the old man had kept Brady out of school to go see an attorney. So, Sam’s wife called the old man and told him what he was doing was not right and that he needed to return Brady. The old man’s response was to tell Sam’s wife that Sam needed to be hospitalized and that he would not return Brady. There was no offer of help, there was no understanding, there was nothing even remotely resembling the type of love one expects from family. No, what the old man delivered was cold and calculated, lacking a shred of human decency.
Again, in retrospect, Sam and his wife should have gone over there right then to get the boy, but they were both in shock and didn’t know how bad things were going to get. That evening they called the police for help. The police went to the old man’s condo, but the old man and his wife had asked the doorman to lie to the police and say they were out of town. Meanwhile, they took Brady and drove him to the last place on earth that anyone would have ever believed would be in Brady’s best interest, to the woman that the old man himself said the summer before should not have parental rights—to Brady’s mother.
Around the same time, after being told by his attorney that he did not have a leg to stand on, the old man decided to take it in another direction and filed a complaint with Child Protective Services, falsely accusing Sam of child abuse. Within 3 days, CPS had determined the old man’s allegations were baseless and they closed the case, recognizing that this was, at most, a dispute between an old man and his adult son. But in many ways by this time, irreversible damage had already been done. The old man had been working for months behind the scenes to poison Brady’s perspective of Sam, in the ultimate act of vengeance against his own flesh and blood.
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And before Sam knew it, about a year after his old man had told him that he would love nothing more than to pay a high dollar family law attorney to terminate Brady’s mother’s parental rights, the old man was actually paying for Brady’s mother to have high dollar family law attorneys to falsely accuse Sam of child abuse. Even a cursory look at the complaint, however, revealed that what was really going on was a vengeance mission by an ex-wife and an old bitter man upset over his adult brain-injured son’s text messages.
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As you read this you may be thinking to yourself that this sounds unbelievable – why would an old man pull such an ultimate power play? Surely there is more to the story. And there is. What will be revealed next are some of the truths Sam’s old man was desperate to hide. Sam had been pushed past his limit and he had made clear he was not going to hold the old man’s secrets anymore. And that is what was and still is driving the old man. Next week we will take a look at what those secrets were and what has driven the old man to try and destroy Sam and erase his existence.