Three months ago, Jason Porter was in a coma. Two Saturday’s ago, he finished 13th in the Asheville Half-Marathon.

What happened in between is a story Jason can barely remember — and most of his friends and family will never forget.

Monday, June 21, started out like any other day for the 31-year-old graduate student at Western Carolina University. After grabbing a bagel, Jason hopped on his bicycle and headed out the door for a long morning ride. He was training for his first Ironman triathlon while taking a full class load at WCU, teaching an undergrad course, coaching the track team, and waiting tables at a local restaurant. Jason wanted to get in a solid ride and maybe squeeze in a 10-mile run before class that morning.

He had cranked up Catamount Gap on N.C. 107 and was heading down toward campus when suddenly a Ford F 150 slammed against the guardrail behind him. The truck was going about 55 miles per hour when it hit Jason from behind, knocking him off his bike and hurtling him 40 feet down the hill. When Jason landed, the back of his skull smacked the pavement and whiplashed forward.

Jason was in shock, and he reflexively tried to stand up. Fortunately, a former EMT was driving the opposite direction and witnessed the accident in his rear view mirror. He ran back and pinned Jason to the ground.

“Please let me get up. If you would just let me get up I’d be OK,” Jason kept repeating, still suffering from shock. But the EMT did not allow Jason to move until the ambulance arrived, a decision which may have saved Jason’s life. He was rushed to Harris Regional Hospital and then transported to Mission-St. Joseph in Asheville.

Jason remembers none of this. His earliest memory is waking up in the hospital and holding hands with his sister. Jason’s parents and two brothers also surrounded his bed that evening.

Jason had sustained multiple contusions to the frontal and temporal lobes of his brain. A few days later, he collapsed on the hospital floor and thrashed through bloody, convulsive seizures. He was rushed to the intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator. To drain the massive fluid build-up in his brain, surgeons drilled a hole in the back of Jason’s skull and implanted a shunt. The surgery went well, but doctors doubted he would come out of his coma. For three days, Jason lay motionless and unresponsive on life support.

Then, on the morning of June 29, the neurologist checked in with Jason and the Porter family. He did his best to describe the shunt mechanism to Jason’s parents: swollen brain bruises were causing pressure to build up in Jason’s cranium, he explained. The shunt — a plastic tube protruding from the back of Jason’s skull — siphoned the swollen areas and relieved intercranial pressure. Jason’s mom was still confused.

“It’s like the radiator of a car,” Jason said. The room fell silent. Everyone looked wide-eyed at Jason.
“Yeah, exactly. Like a radiator,” said the stunned neurologist.

Jason was back.

He didn’t waste any time getting back on his feet, either. Five days after his surgery, Jason was walking around the hospital — with the brain drain still sticking out of his head. His physical therapist, Candace Nichol, was especially amazed by Jason’s rapid recovery. On their once-a-day walks, Jason talked to Nichol about cars, triathlons, and the next bicycle he planned to purchase. He asked her to play tennis with him the following week. He even offered Nichol training advice for her upcoming marathon.
“Some days, I felt like he was my therapist,” Nichol laughed.

She believes Jason’s will power, athleticism, and positive personality had a lot to do with his speedy recovery. So did his experience in a hospital trauma unit a few years earlier. Ironically, Jason had worked with brain-injured patients as part of his pre-med internship — an experience which helped him better understand his own condition.

But the most important part of his recovery, Jason insists, was family.

“They stayed beside me round the clock. They flew from all over the country to be with me. We’ve always been a close, strong family. Now we’re even stronger.”

Jason was discharged from the hospital on July 16. He went for his first run one week later — a sluggish 2-mile shuffle that induced skull-splitting headaches. But he went back to the track the next day, and the next day, and the next. His father sat in the bleachers during each run, and afterwards, drove Jason to school.

“I felt like a little kid all over again,” Jason explained. “I had to call my dad to get a ride. My parents wouldn’t let me out of their sight.”

But Jason says his parents’ vigilance helped him get through the next two months. Despite his quick comeback, Jason still struggled with basic math. He couldn’t remember sequences of events very well. And track workouts were more painful than they’d ever been in his life.

“Before the accident, I was winning triathlons and trying to qualify for the Olympics. Now I had to start all over.”

Often, frustration would give way to depression, but Jason says his family kept him going. Years of competitive distance running also helped him endure — both mentally and physically — down the long road to recovery.

For Jason, that road led to Asheville.

Eight weeks after leaving the hospital, Jason toed the starting line of the Asheville Half-Marathon. He had registered for the race when he was still struggling to run a half-mile. But on Sept. 22, Jason took off once again with the lead pack — including elite Kenyans and some of the fastest runners in the South.

Jason ran steady through the first few miles, then picked it up midway through the race. He cruised around Beaver Lake and passed a Kenyan runner at the 8-mile mark.

Heading back into town, Jason wasn’t sure he could maintain his 5:40-mile pace. A hammering headache and sloshy stomach were starting to wear on him. And a long, steep hill in the last mile nearly reduced him to a walk.

“Right about then, I thought about all the people that helped me  doctors, nurses, friends, family. I guess I got a little emotional. But I knew suddenly that I could hang on.”

He climbed the hill and kicked the last half-mile down Haywood Street. As he crossed the finish line, Jason threw his arms in the air. The gesture wasn’t a celebration of his spectacular 1:14:23 finishing time, or his age-group victory, or his 13th place overall finish.

“It was a celebration of life,” Jason said.

(Will Harlan writes about the outdoors. He can be reached at wharlan@hotmail.com)

 

Back to Top

The Smoky Mountain News