Iron Heart: The True Story of How I Came Back From the Dead (19 page)

G
od must have a morbid sense of humor. Or life is simply filled with unexplained mysteries and uncanny coincidences. Take your pick: destiny, luck, or fate? Or all three?

As the accident’s second anniversary approaches, I can’t help but feel the obsessive need to relive the day’s events—a day I don’t even remember, and which I’ve only been able to reconstruct from what my parents and others have told me. I’m not looking forward to July 6. It’s like I should hold an anti-celebration to permanently place that day forever behind me.

On the day before, July 5, 2006, as I’m finishing up a weight-lifting workout at home, I get a call from my dad. “Brian, something bad has happened to Nana. She’s in the hospital.”

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“She was at the doctor’s earlier this afternoon and they ended up rushing her to the hospital.”

My grandmother’s health has been declining for some time. She’s been out in and out of the hospital several times. Her latest health scare resulted in quadruple bypass surgery several years ago.

I’m very close to Nana, my mother’s mother. She’s a classy, glamorous lady who always had her hair and nails done. But she was also the type of person who wasn’t afraid to kick off her shoes and play soccer or hockey with me in the basement. Or, we’d go to the lake to fish, dribble a basketball around, draw together, or even watch cartoons on the television. She was always fun to be around and told great stories. A great buddy.

When my parents and I arrive at the hospital, we are directed to Intensive Care. Uh-oh, I know what this means. We see my grandfather, Big D, first. He’s wearing sunglasses to hide his tears. I’ve never seen him like this before. He looks shaken, dazed, even shocked.

We find out from my Uncle Joe that she’s in a coma. When I hear that word—
coma
—I’m overwhelmed by vivid flashbacks. Walking into her room is like stepping into the past. The same beeping and pinging machines that kept me alive are keeping Nana alive. She’s lying in bed, unresponsive and motionless, connected to a nest of tubes. Her eyes are closed but then sporadically flicker open from either the medication or irregular electrical nerve impulses misfiring in her brain. A ventilator is doing her breathing. A nurse dabs Nana’s forehead with a damp cloth. My heart is breaking as I stand by her bed. The nurse says that she went into cardiac arrest earlier in the day before slipping into a coma.

Throughout the rest of the afternoon and evening, I repeatedly go in to check on her between visits from other family members, and see if I can get any responses from her by slightly squeezing her hand. I know what it’s like to be trapped inside a locked-in body and how you need to make a connection to the outside world. But Nana barely responds to my touch.

I return to the hospital the next morning with my parents. Holding her limp hand, I tearfully read her a letter that I composed a few hours before. I don’t know if she can hear or understand me. I’m an emotional wreck when I get to the end.

One week later, she passes away.

O
ver the years, I have collected several pieces of exercise equipment, including a treadmill, stationary bike, bench-press system with a leg device to work the hamstrings and quadriceps, and an inexpensive Nautilus machine. I also have a punching bag, barbells, and set of dumbbells. I prefer to work out with free weights because it allows you to control the weight throughout the various movements.

When I swam in high school, I needed to be lean, so I lifted light weights for repetition to build muscular endurance. But when it was time to bulk up for throwing the discus in track season, I switched my focus to lifting heavier weight at low repetitions. Now that my collegiate swimming career is on standby, I decide to concentrate on building muscle bulk. When I get home from classes at St. Mary’s, I eat dinner, do homework, and then work out for an hour and fifteen minutes. I often add some cardio on the treadmill.

Within several weeks, I’ve gained a noticeable amount of weight. My diet consists of a protein shake at breakfast with two cups of oatmeal and a glass of orange juice. For lunch, it’s a turkey sandwich on whole wheat bread, a granola bar, a banana, another protein shake, and some yogurt. For dinner, I eat two chicken breasts, or lean meat and rice, or fish with a vegetable. For dessert, it’s another protein shake. Between the meals, I continually have healthy snacks—rice cakes, celery, carrots, peanuts, cashews, and apples.

By mid-May, I’ve gained about twenty pounds, which finally puts me up to about two hundred pounds—a weight gain of seventy pounds since I left Intensive Care twenty months ago. I also feel better about my physical appearance because the scars on my stomach, arms, neck, and chest have started to fade from a garish blood-red to a more tolerable light pink. My left shoulder is improving as well, but it still gives me trouble on the bench press.

The bench press has always been my favorite exercise. My interest started back in sixth grade when I began lifting on a bench press in our garage. As I became older, I bench-pressed heavier weights; I never really had formal training, but in my junior year in high school, I entered a regional power-lifting championship and competed in the 181-pound division. I took first place.

I’ve always wanted to pursue amateur bodybuilding. Like many others in the sport, I’m a big fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger, especially after seeing the classic 1970s bodybuilding documentary “Pumping Iron.” Another world-class bodybuilder I follow is Jay Cutler, a two-time Mr. Olympia winner who now lives in Las Vegas. Many think Jay’s the next Arnold. I’ve read his magazine profiles, researched his background, and kept up-to-date on all his important wins. He stands only five feet nine, but his massive arms are twenty-one inches and his bulging chest measures fifty-six inches.

One day as I’m looking at Jay’s website, I send him a quick email to introduce myself and see if he can offer any advice. The next day, he fires off an email to me with helpful workout tips—daily exercise routines, when to rest, how much cardio I should be getting, and proper foods to gain lean muscle. Later, he sends me an autographed copy of his book, several workout DVDs, shirts, and a cap.

Following his recommendations, my revised workout program consists of upper-body routines on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The lower-body routines take place on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. On each day, I usually do about three sets of ten different exercises, starting with eight reps, then six reps, followed by four reps. On Sunday, I take a break from all training and allow my muscles to recover.

I log every single workout in a grade-school composition book. It doesn’t take long to see noticeable results on paper and in the mirror. It seems like only yesterday I was bench-pressing a broomstick in the large physical therapy room at Kernan Rehabilitation Center, and now I’m able to lift 225 pounds for a single maximum effort. Back then, I struggled to bicep-curl two and a half pounds, and now I’m up to thirty pounds. Best of all, a Canadian nutritional supplement company that manufactures whey protein powder called 4EverFit, as well as selling a wide range of products for hard-core bodybuilders, has contacted me in regard to sponsoring my amateur bodybuilding career.

I have all the motivation in the world to see how far I can take my bodybuilding. By Christmas, I weigh 240 pounds. Two years ago, in 2004, I was a fraction of this size, weak, feeble, and uncertain about whether any of my withered muscles would reappear. I had just graduated from a wheelchair imprisonment. Now I can bench-press 375 pounds and bicep-curl 50 pounds. I’ve had to buy an entire new wardrobe. My friends and parents are amazed by my physical transformation. I can’t help but laugh when I think about what it would be like to swim in this kind of bulked-up shape. Yet when I look in the mirror and do bodybuilding poses, I don’t always see beefcake Brian staring back. I see instead sickly Brian on life support in Intensive Care. Even though I look larger in the reflection, I feel diminished and frail. My mind remains in a state of denial, unwilling to accept my radical body makeover. No matter how many new pounds of muscle I’ve managed to accumulate, I still see an emaciated victim underneath muscle-plated armor. Nonetheless, as a reminder of how far I traveled on the road to recovery, I keep a photo by my bed that was taken shortly after leaving Intensive Care: I’m sitting in the wheelchair, slumped over with my hands folded and head lowered. This sad, forlorn image that signifies defeat always makes me nervous that the moment I stop working out, all the progress I’ve made can be stripped away. Because my life before and after the accident remains joined together as dueling realities, I am always aware of how lucky I was to escape death, and escape being permanently trapped in a non-functioning body. The effort of taking a shower, for example, is a daily reminder that my scars are as much mental as physical. The bodybuilding pushes me forward, allowing a positive reawakening of my athletic potential.

That is why I constantly remind myself to live in the present even though the post-accident phase demands to ride shotgun. During that first month home from Intensive Care, Dad had to carry me upstairs so he and my mom could bathe me just like when I was little. He even joked, “Don’t forget you’re probably going to have to do this for me in twenty years.” He actually believed that I’d be healthy and normal again one day. After every shower, he’d carry me to my bed where I’d sit in my bathrobe and look at my thin reflection in the mirror and ask myself repeatedly:
Is this really me?

But now, the
new
me is the one who worked hard and long for the past year to pack on weight and muscles because that is my real identity—not Skeleton Boy.

Through my weight training and bodybuilding over the past year, I’ve learned a lot about fitness and nutrition. I consider getting a part-time job as a personal trainer. My athletic background and recovery from the accident will help people achieve their fitness-related goals. Look how far I’ve come since the crash. Glancing back, however, those two years seemed endless because the recovery took place in small, everyday increments. There were no shortcuts.

To become certified as a personal trainer, I first needed to pass a test, There are several types of exams for certification, but the one usually recommended is from the American Council of Exercise. The nearby College of Southern Maryland offers this test, so I invest in a thick textbook and study manual. A lot of the material deals with anatomy, some of which I learned throughout my rehab—bones, muscles, joints, and ligaments. Then there’s exercise physiology and how it relates to a potential client’s age and health. After studying for several weeks, I take the three-hour test that features 150 multiple choice questions as well as a written simulation test with two client scenarios.

Because I won’t know my test results for at least a month, I find an entry-level job at the Sport & Health Club where I started working out after I came home from the hospital with my Uncle Joe. Members range in age from teens to senior citizens. Most of the women work out on the upper level with the resistance equipment, elliptical machines, treadmills, and stationary bikes. The guys mainly work out downstairs with bench presses, leg press machines, squat racks, and free weights.

My tasks entail going around with paper towels and a disinfectant spray bottle to clean the equipment and shadow other personal trainers. I like walking around in my red T-shirt with the club logo, answering members’ questions about the exercise machines.

After a month of working at the gym, I receive a letter in the mail from the American Council of Exercise. I open the white envelope in the driveway, look at my test scores, and see that it says Congratulations in big bold letters at the bottom of the page listing my passing score. I drive back to the gym to proudly show my bosses the official documentation that I’m certified and can begin finding and training clients.

My first client is Kawanda, who is a military mother in her mid-thirties and slightly overweight. I have talked to her on several occasions in the gym. She knows about my background with the accident and recovery, and I think that is why she wants me as her personal trainer. She knows that I understand the frustration of being out of shape and the desire to get healthy and fit.

Kawanda’s most pressing concern is passing the U.S. Army’s annual physical training test. One requirement is running one and a half miles. She says that her running is weak. For our first session, I start her out with some light stretching for about five minutes and then we go over to the treadmill for ten minutes to get her muscles activated. Then we do thirty minutes of light strength-training routines on the various machines. In addition to toning and conditioning exercises, I recommend that she join a group fitness or spinning class. Our session ends with several minutes on the stationary bike for a cool down. We decide that I will be her personal trainer on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

My second client is a middle-aged mother named Karen who is trying to lose the weight she gained during her recent pregnancy. I help design a plan that will also improve her overall conditioning level because she used to be active before she became pregnant. We’re scheduled to meet three times a week.

My third client is Aaryn, who is a collegiate swimmer and wants help with her strength training. I put together a fairly hard-core plan that focuses on shoulders, core strength, and leg power. I recommend that she do two sessions a week with me.

Outside of personal training, I’m also teaching swim lessons during the week to a high school sophomore swimmer named Rachel. She’s been swimming competitively for several years and wants extra help with the one-hundred-yard butterfly. We drive to a local pool to practice for an hour. I usually have her do one-arm drills, swimming with a resistance band, and swimming at race pace.

Because of the amount of time I was required to spend in physical therapy after my long hospitalization, I feel like I have a unique perspective in helping my nonathletic clients. It’s a wonderful motivational tool—even for myself when I occasionally imagine that I’m back in the hospital. I know I must live in the present, but the past is something I can’t seem to escape from either.