Bringing Back Jonathan's Brain

When I was 21, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. The news sucked dry nearly all the hope in my life. But I didn’t give up, and after spending the next few years healing and doing some deep soul searching, I found happiness again and meaning in my life. That was true until, three years later, I was hit by a car while riding a bike to work.


One morning I was crossing an intersection and an oncoming car pulled a blind-left turn in front of me. It didn’t matter that I was wearing a helmet or that it was my right of way, because at my speed, my face had hurled into the car. The paramedics quickly intubated me and rushed me to the ER at Harborview Medical Center, a hospital known for its trauma centered care. The Glasgow Coma Scale is a measure of consciousness from 3-15. I had hit the car with so much force that I scored a 3, and was barely alive. Because I was completely unresponsive and there was so much blood at the scene, the police documented the crime as a homicide.


I had broken the area between my left eye and nose and the doctors had to implant a titanium plate to keep my eye from falling back into my skull.  I spent two weeks in an altered state of consciousness in the ICU, meaning that although I was responding to questions, I wasn’t making any sense. My mind wasn’t there. Then suddenly, against all of the doctors’ prognoses, I had slowly returned to reality after another two weeks in the hospital. I spent the next few months in intensive outpatient recovery. And each subsequent year I worked hard to continually stretch and expand my brain’s abilities to be where they were before. I attended meditation retreats, took dance lessons, language classes, and even physics courses. I did as much as I could to get my brain working again.


My doctor warned me that because I already had such a significant traumatic brain injury, a future concussion, no matter how slight, could result in worse symptoms. So I took great care to protect my head.


I was good for years, until this past January when I was helping to off-load a desk from a flatbed truck at work. As the desk propped up from the ground, its leg struck me in the head in the same spot that the car had hit me. I then started to experience the same symptoms as before: headaches, insomnia, memory loss, difficulty with concentration, and a decrease in reading comprehension.


So far, the best thing for my recovery has been to sleep, but it’s been hard because of insomnia and grad school. I’ve had to skip classes or turn in late assignments because I had to prioritize sleep before everything else. I’ve seen several different kinds of doctors but nothing has seemed to help me heal. My best chance at recovery will be at a neurological treatment center in Provo, Utah called Cognitive FX. It is the only place I have found where doctors and technicians work to rewire the damaged areas of the brain through therapy. I will begin my week of treatment with a functional MRI, which the doctors will use to examine the regions of the brain that remain inactive as a result of the concussion. Afterwards, I will undergo over 36 hours of intensive cognitive therapy for four and half days in which I will retrain my brain to function as it did prior to my brain injuries.


This treatment will cost me $12,000 and will not be covered by insurance. I am in grad school full-time and working as a teaching assistant. I work from paycheck to paycheck, barely scraping by. I am asking everyone I know, and everyone they know, to please contribute to my campaign and help bring my brain back. Thank you!

Cognitive FX website