Your excuse or your story
After surviving a car accident that nearly took his life, incoming Carolina student Colin Thompson chooses to make the experience part of his story instead of an excuse.
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It’s early August. Twenty-year-old Colin Thompson sits at a table in front of Merritt’s Store & Grill on South Columbia Street in Chapel Hill. He’s just returned from Laity Lodge Youth Camp (LLYC), near San Antonio, Texas, where he’s been a counselor for three summers running.
A Houston native, Colin has lived in Chapel Hill since October 2014. He’s happy to return to North Carolina, despite leaving the bonds he’s formed at LLYC.
“Chapel Hill is so much smaller than Houston,” he says. “It’s a nice change of pace. All the trees are so pretty, and this will sound strange, but it just smells good here.”
Colin begins his freshman year at UNC-Chapel Hill next week. He was supposed to start his college career at Carolina exactly one year ago. A month prior, however, on July 6, 2014, on his way home to Houston from LLYC, a car accident nearly took his life.
Unconscious, he was airlifted from the scene of the accident to University Medical Center Brackenridge in Austin, where he spent sixteen days in a coma, followed by a month in the intensive care unit and two months of inpatient rehabilitation at The Institute of Rehabilitation and Research (TIRR) in Houston.
His long-term prognosis was uncertain. He’d suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and brain stem hemorrhage. The doctors told his parents that any improvements he was going to make in the days and weeks after the accident would be gradual.
“People don’t generally have good outcomes with this injury,” says his mom, Betsi. “I remember telling him that the doctors hadn’t been sure how well he’d do. He replied, ‘They couldn’t have known how I’d do because they didn’t know me, Mom.’ That’s the type of person Colin is. He’s wired to be positive and keep trying no matter what.”
A Herculean Effort
After completing inpatient rehabilitation in Texas, Colin and Betsi moved to Chapel Hill to join his dad, Patrick, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist who had transitioned from Baylor to UNC in the spring. Upon arrival, Colin began outpatient care at the UNC Center for Rehabilitation Care. His care team at UNC, including Dr. William Filer, assistant professor of physical medicine, and physical therapist Jennifer Newman, among many others, consider Colin the ideal patient.
To keep reading, please see UNC Health Care: http://news.unchealthcare.org/news/2015/august-1/your-excuse-or-your-story
