William's Perspective

The first thing I remember was waking up one day, looking around and realizing something was wrong; I couldn’t talk or move. Little did I know at the time, my life had been changed forever. I had a traumatic brain injury. I was told I was in Charlotte Rehab Hospital in Charlotte, N.C., but I didn’t understand what had happened to me. In March of 2005, while traveling to Florida, the car I was riding in was hit by an 18 wheeler. Due to the impact, I had a traumatic brain injury, six strokes, and was airlifted to Shands Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. I was coming out of a 40 day coma, unaware of anything that had happened to me. The first thing I remember seeing was a huge green tree out the window of my hospital room and my family all around me. They comforted me and kept telling me not to be afraid that God was taking care of me.

Over the next few weeks, I slowly began moving. I went from not being able to move my left leg at all, to moving my toes, then my foot, and then my leg. As I sat in my wheelchair in the hall of the hospital, watching others being pushed in their wheel chairs, I asked God to help me walk again.

My family began to give me food for my brain. I could feel something happening inside my body. I was gaining strength each day and movement was returning to my arms and I was able to stand up with my nurse or parents holding me, and then I took my first step. I learned, step by step, with the help of my therapist and family how to walk using a walker. It was as if I was learning everything all over again. I didn’t understand then why I had forgotten how to walk. Once I progressed to the stage of learning to walk with a cane, I decided my goal was to walk out of Charlotte Rehab when I was discharged.

The day finally came for me to go home; it had been 72 days since our accident. Praise God, I was finally discharged. It was obvious He heard my prayer because that day I was able to walk out the door of the Rehab Hospital.

But God did not stop there working in my life. After I got home I began family and outpatient therapy. My family worked with me almost non-stop every day. It seemed as if everything we did was turned into some type of therapy. In some ways, it was like waking up from a long dream and trying to figure out why life had changed while I was sleeping. But as I became more aware of what had happened to me and saw how God was healing me, my faith grew stronger and stronger and I asked Him to help me run again. Before the accident I was training as a cross country runner and the day before we left on our trip I ran seven miles. Thus it became my goal to run cross-country.

Month after month as my speech, motor skills, and walking all continued improving, my brain was working better and I was encouraged by that, but I still couldn’t run. I was determined not to give up. I kept working and believing God would help me reach my goal. My walking kept improving and then one day I was able to walk to the end of our hall with more speed. My family cheered me on, worked with me and encouraged me to keep going and believing that God was rebuilding my strength to run someday.

I continued working on building my strength through good nutrition, and food for my brain cells. (My goal now is to tell everyone about this brain food.) I exercised my body and my brain daily. My brain had to be trained and exercised. My mom would say, “We have to train your brain, tell your brain to move your arm.” Training my brain to relearn everything became our daily routine.

After a year of constantly training and feeding my brain it gained strength and relearned almost everything that I knew before the accident. When I left Charlotte Rehab I was 15 but only on an elementary level of understanding. The cognitive therapist said I would need much assistance and special classes to catch back up to my grade level. But with my family working with me, I was able to return to my Christian School in the fall of 2005 and finished the 10th grade with honors. Training my brain was working!

With a year of hard work, I was also able to run again. I still stumbled and fell at times, but I would get back up and keep going. God kept restoring me and I was able to join the cross-country team my junior year of high school. On my first cross-country meet I placed 11th out of 60 runners. I was able to run cross country as well as keep my grades up. In the summer of my junior year I reach my original goal; I ran seven miles. Praise God!

My senior year was very hard, but I did well and graduated with honors! When I spoke at my graduation ceremony, I told my class that life will be full of obstacles; it is how you face these obstacles that determine the outcome. I gave God all the glory, for how He had helped me to face my obstacles and overcome them. I now know more than ever that He has a great plan and a purpose for my life. I want to help others who have suffered a brain injury by sharing with them how they too can “train their brain.”
William Boggs

Safe in the Hand of God

“Your right hand has held me up; Your gentleness and condescension have made me great.” Psalms 18:35 (Amplified)

How comforting it is to know that our life is safe and secure in the hand of God. The very one who created the universe holds us in His hand. It is in those times when there is a great trial in your life that you really understand His full protection. It is in the trials that you are aware of His strong presence as a shield as He works all things out for your good.

When I was in the middle of the greatest trial of my life, I learned what it means to release everything into the hands of God. He revealed to me what He would do if I would take my hands off of the situation and simply trust in Him. He told me to read Revelation 21:5. I turned quickly to the verse that assured me of His intentions. “Behold, I make all things new . . .” it did not say some things, a few things or most things. That verse said “all things.” At the time I was looking at my son laying in the hospital in a coma. His life was totally in the hands of God. The doctors said that there was nothing they could do. With this statement we knew that there was nothing on earth that could be done, our sons life was in the Great Physician’s hands. God said, “Behold, (or watch) I will make all things new.” Or, as we say it today, “Watch this”

We prayed, released him to the Lord and watched as The Great Physician worked. He started with a single tooth. Our son’s front tooth was knocked completely out of place from the can accident. As we prayed and declared, “He will make all things new” by the afternoon his tooth had moved back into place. That may not seem significant but, it was huge for us. As he lay there paralyzed and unable to move, God was saying, trust me, if I am concerned with his tooth you can trust me with every part of his body. We prayed and watched for 72 days as each finger and toe slowly began to move.

Today, every part of our son’s body is moving freely and he lives a normal life. We learned during those difficult days, to trust in God with the smallest things like a tooth. Once we saw something as small as a tooth move we knew He had the situation in His hands, and He was shaping and molding everything together for good. So today, trust in God, He is holding you and your family in the palm of His hand and He will work all things out for good.

Dad's Journey

Life comes at you and it comes at you fast and often with great fury bringing the unexpected, both pleasant and tragic. Many have experienced this and even as you read this first line your mind is taken to the experience of your own life. Life often seems unfair and the question of “why” and “will this every end?” roll through your mind in an almost tormenting way.

Such has been the case in our won life, but I’m here to tell you that there is an end to the trauma, and there is help and there is hope.

On March 26th 2005, the call came that my family had been in a serious car accident in Florida. My wife was okay, our daughter had serious facial injuries, and our son had been air-lifted to a trauma center in Jacksonville, Florida. A few hours later I arrived at the hospital about the same time as my wife, we were told that our son William was not expected to live through the night. He had experienced a traumatic brain injury and the doctors believed his brain stem had been severed. You can imagine the shock and the horror that we initially felt, and the emotions that we experienced when we first walked into that room and saw our son lying there in a coma, hooked up to 15 tubes and on life support. Just hours earlier, this healthy, athletic 15 year old young man had left home to go to his grandparent’s house for spring break, with the intent of reading the Purpose Driven Life to find out what his purpose was for being on this planet. And now he was fighting for his life. I’ll fill in more of the details later.

Now almost three years later, I’m here to tell you of the journey of faith, help, hope, and love. William not only lived, but has done everything that the doctors said he would never do, and he will graduate with his class May 31st.

There have been many components to Williams’s recovery and over the next few weeks, I will share these with you with the hope that they will help and encourage you.

William's Story

A Journey of Faith

On March 26th 2005 our two children (William and Casey) and I (Denise) were traveling to my parent’s home in Florida for spring break. In Stark, Fl. after a brief stop we pulled out into the highway and we were hit by a semi truck. Our daughter Casey suffered many facial lacerations and our son William suffered a severe head injury. When paramedics arrived, William was not breathing and did not have vital signs, he was immediately air lifted to Shands Jacksonville Trauma Center. When he arrived at the hospital he was in a complete coma. He was put on total life support and remained in a coma in critical condition for the next 15 days. During those 15 days, even though he was on full life support, we knew that it was God who was keeping him alive.