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Dog Helps Cope with Brain Injury
At first glance, Matthew Bonfield looks like a normal 24-year-old. The handsome Bob Marley enthusiast constantly wears a signature smile that defines his easygoing personality.
But there is more to the young San Ramon resident than meets the eye.
More than four years ago, a trip to Mount Diablo with his girlfriend would change Matthew's life forever. On a fateful July day Bonfield slipped on loose sandstone and fell 85 feet, narrowly missing jagged rocks. His fall resulted in a traumatic brain injury.
The last four years have been a difficult road to recovery for Matthew and his mother, Linda Stevenson.
Bonfield now has the math skills of a fifth-grader and the reading skills of a seventh-grader.
"It's like having the passing of a child and now having a second child," Stevenson said. "When you look at him, he doesn't look like he has a disability. He gets frustrated easily. For us, we can filter out the noise, but because of his brain injury it all comes in at once for him."
After the fall, Bonfield was treated by a doctor who happened be hiking onMount Diablo at the time. The doctor, who Stevenson said she would love to thank if she knew who he was, arranged for her son to be airlifted to John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek, where he was in a coma for five weeks and given a 3 percent chance of survival.
Bonfield spent six weeks at John Muir before being transferred to Kentfield Rehabilitation in Ross.
"When he came out of the coma, he couldn't talk," she said. "It was like a complete baby. He had to relearn what a toothbrush was. He was putting it in his ear."
But Stevenson didn't give up hope. She played his favorite music to try to communicate with her unconscious son.
"It was a spiritual connection with Marley's music," he said. "My mom put in one of the Bob Marley songs and I heard this song 'everything is going to be all right.'"
Recently
Bonfield's recovery efforts received a big boost. While at Kentfield, Stevenson saw a nurse with a dog wearing a blue coat. She asked about the dog and found out it was part of a program called Canine Companions for Life, a national organization based in Santa Rosa that trains dogs to help the disabled with their daily lives.
Stevenson started the long application process to get a dog for Matthew in spring 2002. It took 21/2 years before Matthew was accepted into the program. But before he could be united with his new friend — a 2-year-old purebred black Labrador named Torelyn — both mother and son had to go through an
interview process and an extensive training course.
Torelyn, who knows 40 commands, also went through extensive training before becoming a canine companion. In addition to learning how to turn on lights and pick up a television remote, Torelyn also was conditioned not to react to stressful situations, such as food being thrown in her face.
The puppies spend a year with a host family and then go through another six to nine months of special training with Canine Companions before graduating.
The program trains two types of dogs: companions and assistants. Torelyn is a companion, and though she has
the same capabilities as an assistant, her main task is to be a friend to Bonfield. Stevenson said Torelyn is a big step in Matthew's goal to be able to live independently again.
"(The dog is) for me to keep active," Bonfield said. "So I can walk down the street and I don't have to worry."
For more information on Canine Companions, visit www.caninecompanions.org.
Sajid Farooq is a staff writer with Inside Bay Area, The Daily Tribune.
Reprinted with permission. © 2005 ANG Newspapers.