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Teenager’s miraculous comeback provides hope for TBI patients
July 21st, 2009 by Kurt Niland
Seventeen-year-old Aaron Bullock, an Oklahoma resident, was critically injured in an ATV accident in 2005. The boy was riding an ATV at the home of his friend’s grandparents when the accident occurred. Sadly, Bullock was not wearing a helmet at the time. Among other injuries, including a broken leg, Bullock suffered from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that left him comatose for more than 2 months. When he emerged from the coma, it was clear that the TBI had a devastating impact on Bullock’s eyesight, mental abilities, and muscle control. Doctors weren’t optimistic about his recovery.
When he was well enough, Bullock was transferred from the University of Oklahoma Medical Center in Oklahoma City to the Children’s Center in Bethany, Oklahoma. There, Bullock lived for the next two years as doctors and therapists worked vigorously to rehabilitate him. Even the most basic functions – talking, walking, eating – had to be relearned.
Although Bullock remained largely unresponsive to all of his therapies, Children’s Center staff persisted. They worked closely with him in a slew of therapies including physical, speech, educational, recreational, and others. One therapy, however, seemed to strike a chord with Bullock more than any other: musical therapy.
After six months of barely any visible improvement, Bullock’s condition suddenly turned around. He began to improve dramatically as if determined to reclaim all of his lost abilities once and for all.
Tami Crawford, one of Bullock’s therapists, told The Oklahoman about the Children’s Center’s rehabilitation efforts for Bullock. According to Crawford, following the patient’s leads and customizing therapy sessions is essential to recovery.
“We made up our own rehabilitation and turned physical therapy into games,” she told the paper.
“It’s all about thinking outside the box — working with the patients themselves about what they want and can actually do.”
When therapists saw that Bullock was especially favorable to musical therapy, they established a course of treatment for him. Bullock enthusiastically participated in the musical therapy sessions and began singing even before he reclaimed his ability to talk.
Megan Long, a music therapist who worked with Bullock, said that music rehabilitates and lights up the whole brain. “Music is a full-brain function. If you have brain damage in one part of the brain, we can still use music to retrain that other side of the brain because music appears all over the place,” she told The Oklahoman.
“If the language portion of your brain is damaged, you may lose the language. But with music, you could still sing,” Long explained.
Suddenly, the spark of life that people recognized as Bullock, the boy they remembered, reappeared. The happy-natured boy everybody knew as a jokester came back. Bullock even beat celebrity Mark Harmon in a drumming competition at the hospital, holding the beat longer than the NCIS actor.
Bullock moved back home after living at the Children’s Center for two years, and was determined to give back to the hospital that aided his recovery so much. Now an Eagle Scout and a junior in high school, Bullock works on ways to improve playgrounds at the Children’s Center and elsewhere – a civic duty that gives him a vast amount of joy. He also completed a two-mile Walk to Cure Diabetes course with his parents.
“Even with his medical hardship, he has the spirit of giving back,” Brian Dougherty, landscape architect for the Children’s Center, told The Oklahoman.
Routine has also played a key role in Bullock’s recovery. His parents help him stick to an exercise program every day.
“With the brain injury, structure is very important to him as there can be memory and cognitive difficulties if he doesn’t stick to a schedule,” Aaron’s mother, Mirka Bullock, told The Oklahoman.
“It must go in order — he is in a summer program now, goes to school every day, rests when he gets home, works on stretching and moving up and down from the floor,” she said.
Lori Boyd, vice president of special projects at the Children’s Center told The Oklahoman that Bullock “has been one of those miracle children to watch.”
“When he came in, we didn’t know what the prognosis would be. And then to see him go from a brain-injured state to being able to walk out of here — that’s one of those miracle things and really shows his dedication to the treatments.”
