Traumatic brain injury

In July 2020, Jonathon Myles was a typical high schooler with a big passion for basketball. He had no idea that passion would soon to help him recover from a devastating accident.

Less than two weeks before his 15th birthday, Jonathon was in a car with his brother and two friends on their way to play basketball when they were t-boned by a driver under the influence. All four sustained some level of brain injury, but Jonathon’s was the worst.

Jonathon was rushed to DCH Regional Medical Center in Tuscaloosa, where he and his family lived. Once he was stabilized, he was transferred to Children’s of Alabama by ambulance for higher-level care.

Jonathon was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) and diagnosed with a severe traumatic brain injury. He was initially in a coma and required a ventilator to help with breathing. He also needed a brain pressure monitor, placed by neurosurgeons, to help treat his brain injury. Jonathan spent several weeks in the PICU and required a tracheostomy tube to help him breathe while he recovered. Doctors were concerned Jonathon might not live or that he might have severe brain damage if he did.

After about two weeks, Jonathon woke up from his coma, but he immediately began facing new struggles. He had lost some of his memories and motor skills, and he would need physical, occupational and speech therapy to relearn how to walk and talk.

His mom, Tiffany, said getting Jonathon back to normal life after the accident was an important part of his recovery journey. “Everyone has worked like a team to get him back to a sense of normalcy. We had clear goals in mind for him to get back to the basketball court,” Tiffany said. “The staff used that to motivate him to keep him going and keep him pushing.”

Because Jonathon loved basketball so much, Tiffany wanted to encourage him in his recovery in a special way. She gave him the nickname “Coach” and treated his recovery like a sports game. “Every day I would say ‘Come on, Coach, we got to get your head in the game,’ and we would play music in the morning to get him motivated,” Tiffany said. “Trying to stay motivated and keep pushing through, especially the more coherent he became of where he was and why he was there, took a little while.”

Despite the challenges, in October 2020, Jonathon was able to leave the hospital and return home to Tuscaloosa. While he remains limited in many ways, Tiffany says it doesn’t stop him from succeeding in multiple areas of life. He graduated from high school with honors, and his next goal is attending college.

Jonathon visits Children’s bi-weekly for occupational therapy and will soon be restarting physical therapy to help with weakness he still has on the right side of his body. He also visits Children’s every few weeks for a dilation of his airway to help with breathing.

Because of the care he experienced as a patient, Jonathon has dreams of becoming an occupational therapist. “Everybody [at Children’s] has left a lasting impression on our family,” Tiffany said. “And we could not have gotten through it without them.”