Support Center
Voices & Visions
Last Updated:
Success After Brain Injury—Dan's Story
During the summer of 1979, I was enjoying myself, living the life of a teenager. I had just finished my sophomore year at Nyack High School, located in Nyack NY (about 20 miles North of New York City). During that year I experienced much enjoyment, doing fairly well in my classes, befriending many of my classmates, and taking part as an athlete on the junior varsity soccer and lacrosse teams. Sports had always been a big part of my life, both as a spectator and a participant. When I was a kid, I played baseball on the little league team and Pop Warner football for the Valley Cottage Indians. I was active, involved in life, popular with my classmates, and, if I must say so myself, something of a heartbreaker with the girls.
On July 3, 1979, all of this was to come to a screeching halt. After watching the fireworks to celebrate the holiday, I was a passenger in a car accident. I sustained a traumatic brain injury, and was put into a coma for next two and a half months. The way coma's are depicted on TV and in the movies are not necessarily the way they really are. In the movies you might see someone who is in a coma one second, and in the next they wake up like from sleep. For me, and many others, the waking process occurs over a span of a few days to a week. I realize that movies have time constraints, but it is important that people know the truth.
As far as being aware, I remember much of what was going on around me during the coma. My surroundings seemed like dreams based on the reality taking place at my bedside. It was very important that friends and family continue to speak and illicit responses from me. I needed their interaction, even their foresight to play music or turn on the television. I look back and believe that I relied on their hope and trust in prayer.
After many months of inpatient rehabilitation, I returned to Nyack High School part time and continued as out patient at Helen Hayes Hospital. That summer I went to summer school to make up missed work, and the next year I was able to graduate with my class in June of 1981. Over the next six years I took college classes and graduated from Saint Thomas Aquinas College, in Sparkill, NY with a B.S. in psychology.
Today, I continue to work toward bettering my mind and body. While I can’t take part in competitive sports, I’m an avid fan and I watch most every game I can. I miss terribly my old life, but I’ve learned to make the most of what I can still do. And if I could impart one thing to other survivors, it would be the confidence and hope to believe in what they can still do. "Do the best at everything you do in life and know that’s what makes you a success.”
Dan Windheim is a determined young man who puts his heart into everything he does. For more on Dan, visit his website, Living with Traumatic Brain Injury, a project dedicated to supporting and inspiring other survivors. He has written The Poem Book; Reflections of a Brain Injury Survivor, which is a collection of poems on his life and TBI information contributed by his mother, Marjorie.