Running to remember
Man with message. David McGuire makes his way up Holland Street East last week as part of A Run to Remember. The B.C. native is running across Canada to increase awareness about serious brain injuries. Staff photo/Sean Pearce
The 38-year-old British Columbia man is in the midst of a cross-Canada trek to heighten awareness about traumatic brain injuries (TBI) and how to prevent them. His A Run to Remember effectively has him running a marathon every day and saw him pass through downtown Bradford last Thursday, when he was welcomed warmly by Mayor Doug White and a handful of other well-wishers.
Despite the muggy weather, Mr. McGuire was in good spirits, noting the journey thus far has been a truly incredible experience.
And while his campaign to run across the country may have begun in April, the origins of his quest actually go back much farther, to when he first sustained his brain injury six years ago.
The exact circumstances surrounding his injury remain somewhat murky. Whether he slipped and struck his head in the shower or if he collapsed as a result of a stroke or an aneurysm remains a mystery, even to the various doctors who have examined him.
“We don’t know if it was the chicken before the egg or if it was vice versa,” Mr. McGuire explains. “When they took me to the hospital and removed the section of my skull, they realized that my brain had been bleeding for a while.”
Mr. McGuire spent the next seven days unconscious in hospital. When he awoke, he was very confused, to the point he didn’t recognize his family and friends at times. The next year of his life was focused almost entirely on recovery. Doctors feared Mr. McGuire might never walk again, but he defied their expectations. The worst part, however, wasn’t therapy or the seemingly endless tests, Mr. McGuire says. Re-adjusting after being released from the hospital was, by far, the hardest, he says, as the social supports for people with a serious brain injury are virtually non-existent.
The injury damaged the left side of Mr. McGuire’s brain and thus impacted memory, reasoning, certain fight or flight responses and emotional reactions. The short-term memory loss made trying to re-enter the workforce difficult and frustrating as routine tasks and duties were easily forgotten.
Beyond that, some he encountered seemed skeptical about the scope of his brain injury as its symptoms were not always easily identified. He likens his memory following his ordeal to a library full of toppled shelves and cabinets. All of the information might be there, but his brain has a difficult time storing and retrieving information since he sustained his injury, meaning he likely won’t recall sizeable segments of his cross-country run. Eventually, Mr. McGuire slipped into a deep depression. It’s not an uncommon occurrence for people who have sustained a serious brain injury, he adds. “You’re mourning the loss of you,” Mr. McGuire says. “You’re mourning the loss of the person you were and who you could have been.”
It was a difficult time for his wife, Mandy Yip, as well. Prior to his injury, Mr. McGuire was a fairly light-hearted and easygoing person, she recalls. But afterwards, he became prone to anxiety and bouts of severe depression.
“He used to be relaxed, chilled and now there’s a lot of anxiety, so it’s hard to cope sometimes,” she says. “It was hard to tell what he needed (and) it was unnerving to see someone you love go through such a change and not really know who they are anymore.”
At the time of Mr. McGuire’s injury, he and Ms Yip were in a committed relationship, but had only been together for a relatively short time. It was difficult adjusting to their new reality at first, she says, but, in the end, she loved Mr. McGuire and the brain injury had nothing on that.
The couple were married on Aug. 8, 2008 or 08/08/08.
Despite his challenges, Mr. McGuire gradually began to realize things were not as horrible as they could have been.
“It’s not that bad; I’m not homeless,” he says, noting a number of people with brain injuries unfortunately end up on the streets. “I have a wife and we’ve got a house.”
His new outlook prompted a re-evaluation not just of who he was after the injury, but who he’d been before as well.
Prior to sustaining his injury he worked in collections for a big bank. He was good at getting people to agree to payment terms, he says, but the job never brought about any profound sense of satisfaction.
“I figured there was more to life than that, so I made this bizarre sort of bucket list,” he says. “I was a new me (and) I started to think of new things I could do.”
Armed with a fresh outlook, Mr. McGuire took to running and, by 2006, had gone from someone who doctors feared might never walk again to a marathon runner. In 2009, he took part in the Penticton Ironman Triathalon and last year he participated in the Goofy Challenge, consisting of a half marathon one day followed by a full one the next.
That passion for running eventually merged with Mr. McGuire’s yearning to raise awareness about the need to provide better resources for people dealing with brain injuries and also to help educate people on how to prevent having one themselves. As such, he partnered with BrainTrust Canada, a non-profit organization committed to developing national injury prevention strategies, and his efforts attracted the attention of some big name sponsors including Rogers and Honda Canada, to name a few.
So, on April 1, A Run to Remember began in St. John’s, Nfld. and, if all goes according to plan, it will end in B.C. by November’s end.
Mr. McGuire is certainly hoping his efforts have a positive impact on reducing Canada’s brain injury statistics. Few realize that 166,000 Canadians suffer a traumatic brain injury every year — that’s 456 people per day or one injury every three minutes.
The incidence rate among children is even higher with the highest rate of traumatic injury occurring in young males aged 16-24. It’s for those kinds of reasons that more resources need to be allocated to not only assist those living with traumatic brain injuries, referred to as ‘the silent epidemic’, but also toward preventing them, he says.
“The majority of brain injuries are preventable,” Mr. McGuire says. “In some cases, it’s as simple as putting helmets on kids.”
No comments:
Post a Comment