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Adversity The Jason Cooper Story
Transcript
00:00:08You
00:00:42In 2019, Jason Cooper was a high school student athlete chasing the dream of playing football
00:00:49in college.
00:00:50But in an instant, everything changed.
00:00:52A car accident left him with a C3C4 spinal cord injury.
00:00:57He was paralyzed from the neck down.
00:01:03Right now, we're going on the west side of Laura.
00:01:06This is the side that I'm from.
00:01:10This side, back when I was young and stuff, it was a lot of kids grew up on this side
00:01:15of town.
00:01:16You know, it was fun, energetic.
00:01:18We got the fairgrounds down here where the fair was, a couple stores.
00:01:22I can't ever remember a patient who came to me looking like you did in this short time period afterward
00:01:30to be able to do any of these things that you're doing, including squatting 300 or 400 pounds.
00:01:34I mean, you're the exception, not the rule in your recovery.
00:01:38And that's why people are so interested.
00:01:39That's why it's such a special thing.
00:01:41That's why people take an interest in it.
00:01:42Because, you know, it gives people hope for the future.
00:01:44It gives other people hope for the future.
00:01:45And so, sharing all what you're sharing with the world is an important thing to do.
00:02:03My name is Jason Cooper.
00:02:06Well, I'm from Laura, Mississippi.
00:02:09The way that I can describe Laura is basically, it's a small town.
00:02:16Pretty much, you know, everybody pretty much knows me.
00:02:19Coming in, and this is something new for you, number one, hospitality.
00:02:23We're going to give you all the good food, all the trimmings, the extra fat.
00:02:28If you love the country, you love the country, we have the horses, the cows, the dogs, the cats.
00:02:36You pretty much name it in the country, we have it in the country.
00:02:39Just a big family of people.
00:02:41You got good people here.
00:02:43We're going to give you love.
00:02:44We're going to show you love.
00:02:45If you need help, we're there on helping hand.
00:02:48I love Laura.
00:02:49Laura will always be my home.
00:02:51Laura, the people that send Laura, everybody around Laura knows me and stuff like that.
00:02:56We're big on God.
00:02:57We're known for the most churches in Mississippi because we have tons of churches.
00:03:02And Mississippi is a retirement state.
00:03:04You have better homes, cheaper homes, better neighborhoods.
00:03:09It's a good place when you like low-key.
00:03:13No matter how far I get or how far I go through everything, you know, I always remember this place
00:03:20and be home and ever in my life, I've never thought about leaving Laura because I love Laura so much.
00:03:25It was a nice neighborhood to raise the family in.
00:03:30I know Jason through them living across the street from me.
00:03:35They was friends with my grandsons.
00:03:38This is where everything started so far as with my life since when I first moved to Laura when I
00:03:46was six.
00:03:47As far as like a kid, all around, great kid.
00:03:52Real mannered, yes ma'am, no ma'am.
00:03:55I styled at him hard work.
00:03:57He did things that most grown men don't do, you know.
00:04:01Like his daddy would leave work and say, you better have that yard there.
00:04:05He would mow that whole big old yard over there.
00:04:08He was a young, he was maybe 10 or 12 years old, something like that.
00:04:12He started working out young and I told him that if you want to be something in life, it's hard
00:04:18work.
00:04:19You got to start out and work every day.
00:04:22My workout stuff used to be all right here.
00:04:24I had my own weights and bent press and stuff like that.
00:04:28My tires was back there in the backyard.
00:04:32I had a huge speaker hanging from the top of here.
00:04:36When I was younger, I played everything, basketball, football, baseball.
00:04:39He was a very outgoing child.
00:04:43Running this road with a weight vest on, flipping tires in the front yard, digging massive holes in the front
00:04:50yard.
00:04:51I was very active in the neighborhood because my grandson, sometimes they wanted to stay in there and play the
00:04:57game.
00:04:58But I never saw Jason just sit and play the game.
00:05:02Jason was always playing basketball or football.
00:05:07He was very just active.
00:05:09He was just active.
00:05:11With sports and stuff like that, I mean, I'd probably say that's every young man who dreams to go for
00:05:15in sports.
00:05:16I mean, that was mine at first.
00:05:18Just basically working my hardest.
00:05:20Your goal will be there, but you got to work for it.
00:05:23He pretty much did.
00:05:24He worked hard every day.
00:05:26Even when no one else was around, he was working.
00:05:28My basketball goal used to be in the front over there.
00:05:32At nighttime, we could hear him out there bouncing that ball.
00:05:36And my daughter would say, that Jason is out there again bouncing that ball.
00:05:42And that would be in the middle of the night, 10 o'clock, he'd be out there bouncing the ball.
00:05:47This is where everything first started.
00:05:51Me playing youth football when I was around like five or six years old.
00:05:54This is Jay Springs football field.
00:05:58This is where I play tighty-mighties, pee-wee football, midget football, everything here.
00:06:06A lot of law of legends was created here.
00:06:10They normally start around five or six-year-old.
00:06:12I'm not exactly sure when Jason started.
00:06:15He played on my dad's youth football team as a child.
00:06:22It was called the Heidelberg Youth Enhancement Program.
00:06:26And Jason was a player that was a part of that program that my dad created in 2000.
00:06:32He developed me to playing with older people.
00:06:35He played football for my husband in hype.
00:06:39He played, you know, pee-wee football, little league football.
00:06:42And that's how I know him.
00:06:45And, of course, you know, that big smile and everything of his.
00:06:48He's just always been a good kid.
00:06:50This was your pee-wee trophy for Oliver.
00:06:52You remember that one?
00:06:53This is also your pee-wee.
00:06:55When you hit that boy and knocked his helmet off, you got the most improved.
00:07:00So that was great.
00:07:01Tenacious.
00:07:02Mine was made up.
00:07:04He didn't see his size as an issue at all.
00:07:08He played bigger than he actually was.
00:07:10I actually started Jason, he probably was about six, seven, on a team that played 12-year-olds.
00:07:21I love contact.
00:07:23I love hitting.
00:07:23I always played with older people.
00:07:25When I was younger, I always played with older people.
00:07:27And once they play from hype and they go up to the pee-wee level, the 11- and 12
00:07:33-year-olds,
00:07:33then they go to junior high.
00:07:35I didn't start really, really, really getting into, like, playing, playing basketball until
00:07:40I was, like, 12.
00:07:42Like, that's when I really just grew a deep passion for it.
00:07:46Because I was, like, well, football is kind of more injury-powered than basketball.
00:07:50Once I got the ninth grade, football, basketball, that's when it got more intense.
00:07:56Yo, speed was crazy.
00:07:57I ain't going to tell no story.
00:07:58You blinked.
00:07:59Yo, you gone already.
00:08:00You sitting there prepared, ready to play.
00:08:02You're gone.
00:08:03Quick, extremely confident.
00:08:06Worked on his game.
00:08:07I actually trained him as well.
00:08:09Yeah, more of a Muggsy Bowl could get up under you, turn you a whole lot, make you uncomfortable.
00:08:15Probably never ran out of energy.
00:08:17Working out every day and seeing the results that I get from that, when it's time to go
00:08:22work out at the football field or practice or whatever, and they're getting tired, and
00:08:27I still got another, like, three more powers that I got, three more levels that I can just
00:08:33kick up.
00:08:34Like, that feel like a superpower to me.
00:08:36That's why I keep doing it.
00:08:37Yo, IQ was crazy because you saw stuff that I didn't see, and then the fact that after
00:08:41you would tell me, hey, I saw this, I saw that, I saw this, three.
00:08:44You're coming from two different ways.
00:08:45I'm a punch card.
00:08:46You don't be under the goal.
00:08:47So, I mean, your advantage is you're taller than me.
00:08:50I got to be quicker, stronger, and smarter than you.
00:08:52He's memorable.
00:08:54He's memorable.
00:08:55What caught my eyes about you was, like, how you carried yourself because I knew if, like,
00:09:01you didn't ask for no help for nobody.
00:09:02Even you doing your own mechanical work, if you wanted to build something, you built a little
00:09:06vertical max thing by yourself.
00:09:08So, I was like, how you do that?
00:09:09How you move like this?
00:09:09How you move like that?
00:09:10I mean, I'm smaller than everybody.
00:09:12Everybody's bigger than me.
00:09:13Everybody's stronger than me.
00:09:14But at the same time, I mean, understanding that, like I said, the way my body was, the
00:09:19way that I worked out, the way that I trained, and stuff like that.
00:09:23But when you leave high school, you got to adjust to a different level.
00:09:27When you go to college, like, 5 a.m. workouts, doing this, doing that.
00:09:30I've been living that since I was four years old.
00:09:32He didn't cause no issues at all.
00:09:35Always on time.
00:09:37I'm not just saying this.
00:09:38I'm not just saying this just because.
00:09:40I'm saying this because he was an upstanding athlete and student.
00:09:46I never partied, never drank, never smoked.
00:09:50I don't really like to celebrate anything.
00:09:51I just love working out and working because I know, you know, my dad, he put it in my
00:09:56head, you know, like, while they're asleep, you can be working.
00:10:00Are you just telling me something I told him quite some time ago that I didn't think
00:10:04he remembered?
00:10:05Yeah, I told him, I said, he told me it's only two people in this world that you always
00:10:10see fighting, and it's dumb and poor people.
00:10:13Yeah.
00:10:13So that stuck with me.
00:10:14We was in a basketball locker room that day before practice, and that stuck with my head
00:10:19and wrung it, and still, almost six years now since I done graduated and left this school,
00:10:26I still remember that.
00:10:27So if it's one coach that knows me from when I was small up to now, it's Coach Pettis.
00:10:31I really haven't even had no problem with anybody my whole entire life.
00:10:35I've never met anybody that has a problem with me.
00:10:37Because, I mean, I'm cool with everybody, and like I said, my whole life I've been around
00:10:42older people, so everybody knows me.
00:10:44That's basically why I don't really confront people and really think about retaliation as
00:10:50much, because everything is time and energy, so I don't put my time and energy towards something
00:10:55that I don't need to.
00:10:56Just because somebody did something to me, I just don't do that.
00:11:00I don't value that.
00:11:01Just based off what you said, what's the reason to just really retaliate into something if
00:11:06you can just still live on with it?
00:11:08That's where I went to school at for 11 and a half years before I transferred to Hollerberg,
00:11:14my senior year.
00:11:15I actually didn't want to go to school, but my emergency came up, and my dad's family
00:11:22on his side, my grandma, she got breast cancer, and wasn't nobody able to take care of, and
00:11:27my mom then couldn't leave, and my dad sure couldn't leave, because he drove trucks and
00:11:31all, so it was a big switch for me, even though I do love Laura, and I was right down
00:11:36the street,
00:11:37but, you know, Laura, I always be home, you know, but when I went to Hollerberg, you know,
00:11:42I did their good as well.
00:11:55I come into contact with Jason through my daughter.
00:12:02This is my daughter.
00:12:04Asia is, I wouldn't even say she is a friend, she is family.
00:12:09Me and Asia, we go pretty far back, but before I had actually moved to Laura when I was like
00:12:18six or five, I stayed in Hollerberg right around, like, I was like three or four, and I stayed
00:12:26up there in the Beaver Metal community, and her mom and my dad knew each other really well,
00:12:31and my dad and her dad knew each other really well, and my first time going to her dad's house,
00:12:37I've seen her.
00:12:38When he first started school here, she was pretty much the first person that greeted him,
00:12:45and she brought him to the house, and he just became my son, the son that I never had.
00:12:55Lengthy, nothing but legs.
00:12:59She had a lot of energy, so I go in person, she was very, very, very caring, very, very caring.
00:13:10She'll talk about me, she'll talk about me, but in a good way, while I'm right there and stuff.
00:13:19But Asia, if I can describe Asia, Asia was a good person.
00:13:24Asia was a very good person, a loving person.
00:13:27Him and her became best friends.
00:13:30They was like two peas in a pod.
00:13:32She used to call me Little Leg, because I'm shorter than her, and she's real tall.
00:13:37Her nickname for him was Little Short Legs.
00:13:40When I first came to Heidelberg, like I said, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't kind of feel from her
00:13:49that she actually liked me.
00:13:52So, I mean, I kind of just looked it overhead, but as time passed over, and, I mean, we had
00:13:59classes together and stuff like that,
00:14:01and my friends would tell me, you know, she kind of gave me a signal, but at that time, I
00:14:05was already talking to somebody else.
00:14:07So, it was kind of going a little awkward.
00:14:11I think they kind of messed with each other a lot.
00:14:14I believe they liked each other, you know, their little puppy love stuff, but they never just said it.
00:14:20I didn't let her know that.
00:14:22So far as emotion-wise, I kind of keep that to myself, no matter who has a relationship or whatever.
00:14:28They became best friends.
00:14:29He played football.
00:14:30She was a cheerleader.
00:14:32And my goal was to, like, go to the NBA, NFL, whatever, whichever it was.
00:14:36Then we got these right here.
00:14:38These are the last pair of basketball shoes that I had wore.
00:14:44The day, I think it was that Wednesday, that Wednesday night when I played, got out of football practice.
00:14:50I wasn't supposed to play basketball, but the night I ended up going to the gym and shooting with some
00:14:54friends, but I kept them.
00:14:56So, that Wednesday, the day before my rig, got up, worked out before school, went to school, had football practice
00:15:07and everything.
00:15:08I played basketball late that night.
00:15:11I wasn't supposed to, it's football season, so our coaches didn't want us to get hurt, but I kind of
00:15:17eased my way in there to go to the high school and shoot a couple hoops for my friends and
00:15:21stuff.
00:15:22I'd probably say that night from now is probably the last time that I tested basketball, probably about six years
00:15:27ago.
00:15:36So, yeah, we're going to go down here and see this really quick.
00:15:46That's how I had it right here.
00:15:49Right here in this little pit right there.
00:15:52They marked the trees somewhere.
00:15:54I'm not sure where.
00:15:58So, yeah, this is where my life regenerated and restarted.
00:16:02The day of my rig, that Thursday, same thing, worked out before school that morning at five.
00:16:09Took a shower, ate, went to school.
00:16:14Had walkthroughs that day because it's going to be the day before the game.
00:16:18So, once we went to walkthrough, the whole team was going to go to another football game.
00:16:23So, me and my friend, we went back to my grandma's house.
00:16:26We got dressed, showered and stuff.
00:16:28We was on our way to come back to the place to where we was going to leave from.
00:16:35And I remember the road that I wrecked on.
00:16:41A lot of people have died right there.
00:16:42I had a friend that was riding with me, KB.
00:16:46His seat was laid back.
00:16:47On that specific road, it goes downhill.
00:16:50And when it rains, the oil pops up on the road.
00:16:54I was coming down the hill.
00:16:56It was already raining.
00:16:59It was just raining in spots.
00:17:00So, I was already riding brakes coming down the hill.
00:17:03It was raining very hard.
00:17:05The road was uneven.
00:17:07They did a little work right there.
00:17:08It was an unlevel dip right here to your right-hand side over to the side.
00:17:15And as I was coming down, I hit that unlevelness.
00:17:18And I just smashed the brakes real hard.
00:17:21And I just started fishtailing and losing control.
00:17:24And I ended up, basically what they said down here, in this rut, little rut pit down here,
00:17:32somewhere in here, turned over, flipped over, basically balled up like a piece of paper.
00:17:50I was working in health care.
00:17:51So, mainly what I do, I go out and I assist with handicapped, mental retardation, just whatever I need.
00:17:58But it's all dealing with health care.
00:18:00And I was currently at one of my clients' house.
00:18:02And I got a phone call and said, your son has had a wreck.
00:18:08And I was like, no, he ain't had no wreck because it wasn't even 20 minutes.
00:18:13Then dispatch call.
00:18:15And they told me, your son has had a wreck.
00:18:17And we need you to try to get here as soon as possible.
00:18:22Hung up, I did not believe him.
00:18:24I just couldn't picture it or put it in my mind that this really happened to my son.
00:18:32So, I called my sister.
00:18:35She was working.
00:18:36She works at the housing authority.
00:18:37And I called her.
00:18:38I said, hey, come get me.
00:18:40So, by the time she got to me, we got in the car, we met her, and we left.
00:18:45We was heading up that way.
00:18:47By that time, people that was in the area continued to call.
00:18:51They was like, y'all need to get here.
00:18:54You know, they can't get him out.
00:18:56You know, y'all need to be here.
00:18:57When I heard about it, I was at work, and somebody told me about him having the accident.
00:19:06And I was, it was devastating because I knew how active he was, you know.
00:19:12She done jumped in her car and went to the accident.
00:19:15She went to the accident.
00:19:17She called me.
00:19:18I can't remember if I was at work or at home, but she went there, and she just called me.
00:19:23And she was crying, and I'm like, girl, what's wrong with you?
00:19:26And she's like, Ma, Jason, I had a wreck.
00:19:29He done had a wreck.
00:19:30She done had a real bad wreck.
00:19:31He done had a real bad wreck.
00:19:33She said, I, I, I, I, I said, come down, just come down.
00:19:37And it took her a minute to come down, but she eventually calmed down and got herself together.
00:19:44It hurted her real bad because she didn't know if he was alive or dead.
00:19:50I actually made it to the scene.
00:19:53I was out in my truck and I was actually at the truck stop when they called me.
00:19:57And I was dropping my trailer and they called me and told me that he had an accident.
00:20:02And I didn't even get in the car, I just drove my whole 18-wheeled to the accident site.
00:20:08And I actually got to see them pull him out of the car and talk to him before he got
00:20:12in the ambulance.
00:20:13And still the one told me that, you know, he had hurt his neck.
00:20:17So I'm saying, I'm like, you okay?
00:20:19He's like, yeah, I got it.
00:20:20And I'm like, okay.
00:20:20But I noticed he never moved anything with his mouth.
00:20:23You know, he told me, I'm okay.
00:20:25And I seen, you know, like he had a scar on his head and he was bleeding.
00:20:28A tree, that's why I got the scrape on my head from the switch.
00:20:33But a tree was in my driver's seat right here.
00:20:37Like coming through the windshield because it was flipped over.
00:20:41So the tree was coming from right here.
00:20:44And it was coming.
00:20:45It took off the top of my headrest on my seat.
00:20:49But I was threw over into the passenger floorboard.
00:20:52That's why my shoulder and stuff, I still have paralysis on this side because this entire side was in glass.
00:20:59KB is okay.
00:21:00Yeah, he just got a, I think he had sprung his arm or something like that.
00:21:03I'm not pretty sure.
00:21:04And I asked the paramedics and I said, don't stop them at all.
00:21:08Just go to Hattiesburg.
00:21:10You know, they got better doctors to me.
00:21:13And so they left and went on to Hattiesburg.
00:21:16We was driving like a high speed to try to get there.
00:21:19And I told her, I said, just slow down.
00:21:21I said, just take your time.
00:21:23And, you know, at this time I'm still just trying to gather all this information.
00:21:28It was just such a big shock to me.
00:21:31So once we met, kind of got halfway, they called us and said, hey, first responders got them out.
00:21:38The ambulance got them.
00:21:38They're heading to Hattiesburg.
00:21:41I mean, that's why they talk about the golden hour and trauma.
00:21:43The quicker you can get to us, the more likely we can have an impact on what happens to you.
00:21:47And even in a combat zone, you can have a 98% survival rate for severe injuries if people can
00:21:52get to you within that hour.
00:21:53Because unfortunately, despite everything we try to do in a state like Mississippi, as rural as it is,
00:21:59with limited resources in terms of helicopters and ambulances, sometimes people take longer to get to us.
00:22:04Sometimes bad accidents, people take longer to get extricated locally.
00:22:08Sometimes people have an accident and nobody knows they've had an accident.
00:22:10They may sit in the car for hours before somebody finds them.
00:22:13I hung around my grandma all the time.
00:22:15So she would tell me, say, you always look to the hills.
00:22:20That's where your help comes from, which is God.
00:22:23You look to the hills.
00:22:25And at that time, he had my full attention.
00:22:28He had my full attention.
00:22:31And I talked to him the whole way there.
00:22:34I met Jason on October 3rd of 2019.
00:22:37I was on call that day here at the hospital.
00:22:41And I got a phone call from a trauma surgeon on call.
00:22:44I was at home at the time.
00:22:45And, you know, there was an accident coming in.
00:22:47And so I came into the hospital.
00:22:49It was probably 7.30, 8 o'clock at night when I first met Jason.
00:22:53And Jason had been in a rollover accident where he was found in the passenger seat in the front.
00:23:00And when the first responders got to them, he was not moving anything.
00:23:05So they put a collar on him and extricated him from the vehicle and they brought him here.
00:23:09Everything else was history.
00:23:10And I woke up in the hospital.
00:23:12And he was awake and talking to me.
00:23:14He had a laceration on his head from the accident.
00:23:16But his brain was fine, no injury.
00:23:18So he was able to talk to us.
00:23:20But the only thing he had was a little bit of movement in his left arm.
00:23:23He couldn't move either of his legs and he couldn't move his right arm at all.
00:23:25You know, we have protocols for taking care of patients like that.
00:23:28The trauma doctors are involved.
00:23:29They consult the appropriate people they need, whether an orthopedist or a neurosurgeon, to take care of the problems.
00:23:34People instantly get sent over to radiology and get all the pictures that they need for us to understand what's
00:23:40going on.
00:23:40And as soon as we got Jason's pictures back, we realized that he'd broken his neck between the fourth and
00:23:45the fifth vertebra and had damaged the spinal cord because the neck was displaced at those levels.
00:23:51And the spinal cord had been pinched or squeezed in the accident and injured.
00:23:54And that's why he was not able to move anything.
00:23:56This picture here shows a side view of Jason's neck.
00:24:00And the white blocks you see are the vertebra in the neck stacked on top of each other.
00:24:05And you can see here, that's the second vertebra, the third and the fourth.
00:24:08And you can see how the fourth vertebra is stepped out and in front of the fifth, where they should
00:24:15be lined up like the rest of them here.
00:24:17And that's due to, and you can see here, this picture here shows you a slice right through that area.
00:24:22And the pieces of bone on the side that help hold all this together were fractured.
00:24:28You can see the pieces of them here.
00:24:29And so when the accident occurred, basically the energy probably of hitting the windscreen actually broke the bones along the
00:24:38side here,
00:24:38which allowed his neck to slip forward.
00:24:40And so after obtaining these pictures, we took him to the MRI scanner to get this picture so we could
00:24:45actually see the spinal cord.
00:24:47CT scan is like a fancy x-ray, so all you really see is the bones for the most part
00:24:51in this picture.
00:24:51But this picture shows us the spinal cord and the other soft tissues.
00:24:55So the same kind of picture, looking at Jason from his side, you see the brain in the top of
00:25:01the picture.
00:25:01And this gray tube running down, this gray stripe running down here in the middle between these white areas, that's
00:25:08the spinal cord.
00:25:09You can see four and five which are jumped off on each other.
00:25:11And you can see where the spinal cord is now being pinched because the canal has been narrowed.
00:25:15And it's got all this white signal inside the spinal cord, which shows us that the spinal cord was injured
00:25:20when that occurred, when it was compressed.
00:25:22When I got to the hospital and I met with Kiana, she, like I said, she wasn't feeling good because
00:25:29it was kind of hurting real bad.
00:25:32And they separated us from the people.
00:25:34We made it all the way to Hattiesburg to Forest General.
00:25:38The doctor came in and kind of prepped us, you know, hey, we need y'all to sit in this
00:25:42room and kind of wait until we kind of get it cleaned up and everything and you can come back.
00:25:47Obviously his parents were, you know, concerned about what was going to happen.
00:25:51I mean, it's an emotional interaction when you're talking to parents about their children and telling them that, you know,
00:25:58they may have suffered an injury to the spinal cord that's not going to allow them to walk again.
00:26:01With us getting this news, it was like an explosion, you know.
00:26:05You know, it's just, we just didn't expect for this to happen and it happened.
00:26:09And when they told us that he had hurt his neck, you know, it took a lot out of him
00:26:14because I know how hard he worked, you know.
00:26:16He worked every day to accomplish his goal and for that to be taken from me a split second, it's
00:26:23a lot to endure, you know.
00:26:24You have to tell that to people before you take someone to the operating room so everyone is kind of
00:26:28on the same page and understands what's, you know, what's going to happen.
00:26:31And you walk a fine line between trying to be hopeful and, you know, but also, you know, giving them
00:26:36enough information about the reality of the situation so that they're prepared if, you know, if people don't get better
00:26:43after you take them to the operating room for something like this.
00:26:46I didn't know until we got to the hospital.
00:26:48I thought my mom, man, was joking at first when he was in the hospital.
00:26:53Like, well, you paralyzed.
00:26:54And then when the doctor came and told me, I was like, oh, wow.
00:26:58The doctor came in and told us that he's broke his neck.
00:27:04And, you know, we're trying to do all we can do, but he's got to have emergency surgery.
00:27:10So at that time, we just basically say, hey, save him, do whatever you got to do to save him.
00:27:16Just like I talk to families and I tell them the worst thing that can happen and the best thing
00:27:20that can happen, I go into the operating room with a mindset of we're going to do everything we can
00:27:24to try to make the best thing we can happen.
00:27:26And one of the first things I do in positioning the patient is I try to reduce the fracture manually.
00:27:31So under a live fluoroscope image of the spine, I manipulate the neck and try to, while we're still monitoring
00:27:37the nervous system, realign the structures to take the pressure off there immediately if I can and get them back
00:27:42into a normal alignment.
00:27:43And once we've done that, we then mark where we're going to make the incision.
00:27:49And we did Jason's operation through an incision, probably not much bigger than that.
00:27:52And once you get through the skin, most of the structures of the neck run up and down.
00:27:56It's kind of a vertical structure.
00:27:58And so you can get down to the front of the spine fairly easily without cutting anything else.
00:28:01And then under the microscope, I basically take out the entire disc from front to back.
00:28:06And once I get to the back of the disc space, we remove any disc material that's pushing on the
00:28:11spinal cord.
00:28:12We take down a bone that's been pushed back in the spinal canal.
00:28:15And then we use little spacers to reconstruct the appropriate height between the vertebral bodies and to finally line it
00:28:21back up.
00:28:21So I have other instruments in the operating room I can use to do the final realignment of the spine.
00:28:27And then we finish the operation by putting a plate on the front of the spine and screws to hold
00:28:31that anatomic alignment because the bones are still broken in the back.
00:28:35And if you don't put something to hold it in place while it heals, it could become dislodged or dislocated
00:28:40again.
00:28:41And then you just close the skin up.
00:28:42And here's a picture from, you know, after the operation, which shows the side view.
00:28:46Again, you can see the spine line back up again.
00:28:48There's a plate and the screws that are, you know, that are holding the spine together.
00:28:52It's a big team effort.
00:28:53Often in the operating room, depending on what kind of case I'm doing, I might have anywhere from five to
00:28:57ten people in the operating room helping me between anesthesiologists and nursing staff, techs, and the people who support the
00:29:03other things that we do in there, like the monitoring of the nervous system or putting in plates and screws
00:29:08and rods to stabilize people's spines.
00:29:09And then he went to the ICU afterwards because he was still very sick from the accident in general.
00:29:15And typically after these kind of injuries, we like to keep people's blood pressures elevated to optimize the blood flow
00:29:20to the spinal cord and try to give them the best chance possible of recovering from an injury like this.
00:29:24They told me, they was like, well, you're paralyzed from the neck down.
00:29:28Like, there's no, we can't tell you when you're going to get better.
00:29:32They were basically giving me the possibilities of my body, like limiting my body, like, okay, you may be able
00:29:39to do this, you may be able to do that, or this is going to take some time to do
00:29:44this and do that.
00:29:45They called all the doctors to my room.
00:29:47I told them, I said, look, I don't want to be seen.
00:29:49I don't want to take any medicine.
00:29:50Can you move my mom to another room?
00:29:53I don't really want to, I don't want to be around anybody.
00:29:56I just want to be by myself because emotions was, my whole entire life was, you know,
00:30:01I feel like it crashed down on me.
00:30:04And at that moment right there, man, you know, when they, like, um, the devil really came to me.
00:30:11He really came to me.
00:30:12He was like, you know, that's it.
00:30:13It's over with.
00:30:14I told my mom, I said, mom, if I can't play sports, I don't want to be here.
00:30:19So just tell them to pull the card on me.
00:30:27And immediately after the operation, Jason wasn't really any better than he was going into the operating room.
00:30:32My body was like a hard, heavy rock.
00:30:35They told him, he might be on a feeding tube.
00:30:37Simple movement in his left arm, but still wasn't moving his right arm or either of his legs.
00:30:42With the break that he had affected his breathing, it affected his speech and everything because he had to take
00:30:49speech and all that.
00:30:50When he told me what had happened, I was just, the baby's only 17, you know, 16, 17.
00:30:58And then when they told me he wasn't going to walk anymore, I said, oh, man.
00:31:03I'll come from practice and then mom told me.
00:31:04Yeah.
00:31:05That you got in the ring and it kind of bothered me because I was like, is he straight?
00:31:08He good?
00:31:09I just made, that's when I was calling, y'all was calling.
00:31:11Athletics are the heartbeat of this town.
00:31:13Because of him being so athletic, I couldn't wrap my mind around him not being able to walk in.
00:31:19And after he had the accident and everything, she made signs and made sure that the football team had, you
00:31:29know, his number and they had posters all around here with him and everything.
00:31:35He's 17, you know, quadriplegic.
00:31:38I don't know how he's going to, you know, live like that, live with that.
00:31:43A couple of days in ICU and in a regular hospital.
00:31:47And then I went to Jackson Methodist Rehab October the 17th.
00:31:53Once people are stable and able to be out of the acute care hospital, they're no longer at risk of
00:31:58dying or having further complications.
00:31:59We sent them to rehab.
00:32:00Once we left Forrest General, we went over to UMC and Jackson.
00:32:05He lost all his muscle memory.
00:32:07I mean, he was so skinny, like he disappeared overnight.
00:32:10Never seen anything like it.
00:32:12So once he was in the facility, they would come get him.
00:32:15They would, you know, do everything they could for him.
00:32:18I don't know if they airlifted him or what to Jackson.
00:32:22They all, a group of them, I think, went all up there to see him.
00:32:25My husband, when he found out about Jason, it just, you know, brought back memories for him personally.
00:32:32My dad was a paraplegic too.
00:32:34So he also had that, the paraplegic situation after a bad car accident as well.
00:32:42And so I believe that touched him and it brought back some memories of how, you know, it may have
00:32:47been difficult for the family to buy food and, you know, hotel rooms and be able to pay for medical
00:32:56expenses and all that.
00:32:57And he remembered how that was for him.
00:33:00Even though we had, you know, health insurance and everything and everything was being taken care of, the parents, they
00:33:08wouldn't let them stay, you know, both overnight, keep on staying.
00:33:12And rehabilitation is months, months and months.
00:33:16And when my husband found out that, you know, hey, we got to start coming home, he did a fundraiser
00:33:21for them, you know, to raise funds to give to the mother, to give to Jason's mother and the dad,
00:33:28Toby, so they could stay at the hotel.
00:33:30You know, longer, be with their child.
00:33:33I remember my dad getting it together as far as, you know, the program, creating fundraisers and raising money within
00:33:42the community to help him and his family for those medical expenses and food and hotel and things like that.
00:33:49My husband was amazing.
00:33:52He was.
00:33:53Any child that came through his league, he treated them like they were his own.
00:33:58He gave just as much to the community and to every child that came through his program and even after.
00:34:04They had a benefit for him and we wanted him to know that we cared.
00:34:09We went to the benefit.
00:34:10But you know what he told me?
00:34:14My husband told him and he said, Mr. Breland, I'm going to play basketball again.
00:34:20He said, you play basketball again, I'm putting you a new goal outside everyone.
00:34:25We are a powerful community.
00:34:26We are.
00:34:27We are a really powerful community.
00:34:29When it's necessary, we do gather together.
00:34:32We will.
00:34:33The community, it just seems like it all just pulled together.
00:34:38So just having that support system in itself is so vital in mental health because, like I said, I work
00:34:46with a lot of individuals who don't have that support system.
00:34:49And that support system is very important in somebody's progress or lack thereof in their recovery.
00:34:56You're disabled, whatever the case may be.
00:34:58You know, you feel like you're forgotten in the world to where the world forgets you and stuff.
00:35:03I was not forgotten.
00:35:04They made sure I was not forgotten.
00:35:06And I'll never forget them for that.
00:35:08That'll be something that'll live with me until the day that I pass away.
00:35:11When he was first released from the hospital, they were staying, I think, like in a hotel.
00:35:17And me and her went every day to check on him to see that he need anything, that his mom
00:35:23need anything.
00:35:24But once he got home, that's when the work really set in it.
00:35:29I don't, you know, I don't have that extra hand no more.
00:35:31In those times right there, you don't really get genuine people that'll come and help in a way that they
00:35:37did, especially her and her mom.
00:35:39If I was at work, my daughter would go by there and she would relieve the mom and tell her
00:35:44to go do what she need to do, anything.
00:35:46If she needed to go shopping, go home, get anything to come back or whatever.
00:35:51And she just pretty much was there for them.
00:35:54After when I came home, you know, my mom was the first people there to actually, you know, take care
00:36:00of me.
00:36:00He came home.
00:36:02She was there.
00:36:03She went to Jones College.
00:36:06Every day she'll call me when she got out.
00:36:08She said, I'm going to see Jason.
00:36:10I'm going to see Jason.
00:36:11I'm going to check on Jason.
00:36:12She became like, I'd say like, more like a family member.
00:36:18They loved it, Aja.
00:36:20She was like the other daughter that she called his mom, mom, his dad, dad, and his sister, sister.
00:36:28They all loved it.
00:36:31But they knew about what time every day she come by the house because it was like a set time
00:36:37that she come.
00:36:37She'll always be right there to tell me, you know, this ain't the end.
00:36:43You know, you got a lot more to live for.
00:36:45I knew it was something because she wouldn't have been going to see him every day like, you know, she
00:36:52was.
00:36:53And making sure he was doing what he's supposed to do.
00:36:56And making sure he tried to get up.
00:37:00So she was kind of like a motivation person to him also.
00:37:04I was growing feelings in that way too, so far as I like her and stuff like that.
00:37:08His mom said, I wish you would date her or whatever, but it didn't happen at the time.
00:37:16I didn't let her know that.
00:37:17So far as emotion-wise, I kind of keep that to myself, no matter if it was a relationship or
00:37:23whatever.
00:37:23But he, later on in life, he told me that he was going to, I guess, X to be her
00:37:29boyfriend or whatever.
00:37:30And he didn't know how she was going to take it or whatever.
00:37:32I kind of knew, but I just went and accepted, like, you know, that she liked me or whatever the
00:37:37case may be.
00:37:38I thought she was, like, playing.
00:37:39I said, you know her.
00:37:40I said, she was just probably going to laugh it off and play, talking about the short legs, little legs.
00:37:44Go on, on.
00:37:53December the 9th, 2021, four day that morning, she was sick.
00:38:00We was actually supposed to have been going to a doctor's appointment.
00:38:04Well, I was taking her to a doctor's appointment, and she wasn't feeling good.
00:38:08And she was like, Mom, I'm finna go take a shower.
00:38:12So, she was in there taking a shower, and I heard her make a funny sound.
00:38:20And when I got up and went to the bathroom, she was in the tube.
00:38:27She had to cut the water off at the shop, and she was just laying there.
00:38:36And I finally got my sister-in-law, which she was a nurse, and finally got an ambulance that we
00:38:45had to wait on one to come from law because the ones they had here was already occupied somewhere.
00:38:54And I guess about 3 o'clock or whatever that morning at the hospital, they pronounced her dead.
00:39:03So, we had an autopsy dead and everything.
00:39:08And a lot of people don't know, because I don't tell too many posts, but they said she had a
00:39:15blood clot.
00:39:17And she was only 19.
00:39:19And she was my only child.
00:39:23I got the news that she had passed away.
00:39:25I can't really, I was kind of choked up.
00:39:28He was really hurt.
00:39:30It took him a minute afterwards.
00:39:33He couldn't come to the house.
00:39:36He couldn't, he said, he told me he got to the wait.
00:39:41And he just couldn't make himself come in.
00:39:44My mom sat down and we talked a couple times after she had passed.
00:39:48My mom was telling me, you know, she, at that time I was in a relationship with somebody else, but
00:39:52my mom was telling me, you know, age always liked you.
00:39:55And, you know, she always used to talk about you and stuff like that.
00:39:59I think last year, maybe, was probably the first time he's been to the house since she passed.
00:40:06That's supposed to not happen like that, but everybody's born to, you know, pass away.
00:40:12So, me understanding that I almost losing my life at one point, you know, we'll meet again.
00:40:24With a spinal cord injury, you don't, it's not like a broken leg or a broken arm where a doctor
00:40:30tells you, you got three months or you got six months.
00:40:33Spinal cord injury is one of the most unpredictable injuries on earth.
00:40:36When I first came home, I didn't have a power, I had a power chair, but it wasn't mine.
00:40:42They ordered a $50,000 power chair, custom, all black, everything, what I want.
00:40:48To this day, I've never sat in that chair.
00:40:52It still has a wrap on it.
00:40:54I took an oath to myself.
00:40:56My mom was like, man, why you just want to sit in the chair and just, you know, ride around
00:41:00it?
00:41:00And I said, mom, if I sit in that chair, I'll never get back up.
00:41:03The fact that he was able to not go to substances or not indulging in self-harming behaviors and suicidal
00:41:13ideations,
00:41:14that just shows that, A, he either had a good support system and he was able to talk to himself
00:41:24and get himself on the right path of where he knew he could go.
00:41:28I didn't have bad thoughts.
00:41:31I was being very strategic of how I can come out of this.
00:41:34Laying on our back is not an option.
00:41:36We got work to do.
00:41:37I want you to apply the same pressure that you put into your sports.
00:41:43I want you to work.
00:41:44When you play sports and stuff like that, you work out for sports.
00:41:47I work out for life in general.
00:41:50So, I mean, they handle stuff like this.
00:41:55At first, with me being a quad, I started with scratching.
00:42:00I got my cousin and we were scratching.
00:42:04I told him, I said, I want to try something.
00:42:07And as he was pushing my leg in, I said, don't pull it out.
00:42:12I closed my eyes.
00:42:13I can see myself pulling my leg out so far as, like, pushing.
00:42:18So, he'll push it in and I close my eyes and I think of me pushing my leg out, even
00:42:25though if it wasn't doing it,
00:42:26I was just thinking of just pushing it out.
00:42:28You pushing it in and I'm pushing it out.
00:42:30From where he broke and down, where he broke three and four, all that had to regain and try to
00:42:37re-attract and come back together.
00:42:41As he was doing therapy, everything started to fire up that wasn't firing up at first.
00:42:47People who make up their mind they're going to get better, I think, can drive their recovery.
00:42:55And people who decide that they've been defeated from the outset are much less likely to get better.
00:43:00It worked.
00:43:01So, at that point, when I realized, okay, well, this is just a mind game.
00:43:05All I have to do is train my body and train my mind.
00:43:09Start with the signal.
00:43:11Push the signal past my injury point.
00:43:14And I'm good.
00:43:15You know, things kind of start retracting and kind of coming together.
00:43:20Those nerves start waking up to the point to where he could move a finger or, you know, to the
00:43:26point to him moving his whole hand.
00:43:28He began moving the leg on the left side a little bit.
00:43:33Then he began moving the other leg.
00:43:35And then the other arm starts to move.
00:43:37The place where we were staying, the bathroom is, the shower is upstairs.
00:43:43So, I was getting bed-bathed at that time.
00:43:46And my bathroom is outside of my door to the left.
00:43:52I was like, well, I told my mom, I said, one day, I don't know what day it is, but
00:43:57I'm going to walk upstairs and I'm going to take a shot.
00:44:01Like, every day when they left the house, I used to just walk up one step at a time.
00:44:06Not all the way up, but just like one step up, then step back, then one step up, step back.
00:44:12Like, I'm training, I'm training my body and my mind to take those steps to get to the top.
00:44:17In all honesty, in my profession, I've seen those type of situations create a monster and create negativity.
00:44:29Yet, Jason, he turned that into positivity.
00:44:32And although a lot of people who do what I do would claim that it's mostly physical or physiological and
00:44:37that, you know, what's going to happen is kind of set in stone,
00:44:39I don't believe that's true.
00:44:41I mean, I think there's people in the middle somewhere who can make a, have a big impact on their
00:44:46own recovery if they believe that they can, they can do that.
00:44:48It was one Sunday, I was feeling real energetic and I had kind of trained myself and my body to
00:44:55go up the stairs.
00:44:56That's my first time I ever picked my feet up to walk upstairs.
00:44:59And my mom, then when she was asleep, it was on a Sunday morning and I walked upstairs and I
00:45:03took a shower and she came in there, she was like.
00:45:06So it was to the point where he bathed, he dried himself off, he was self-made.
00:45:12It was amazing, man.
00:45:14He kept working.
00:45:15Oh, my dad rooted for him.
00:45:17Jason had started posting YouTube videos of his, of his treatment and his physical therapy and stuff.
00:45:22But he was like, look at him, look at him.
00:45:24He'd say, baby, look at this, look at him go.
00:45:27He was just so proud of him.
00:45:28He also saw the potential of him overcoming that and coming out even stronger than before.
00:45:34And he slowly started getting better.
00:45:36He's learning from how to walk again, how to stand up again.
00:45:40I was so related when I saw him back able to walk.
00:45:45And the doctor was like, this ain't normal.
00:45:48He poured everything into rehab and step by step started to beat the odds.
00:45:53Cooper took the diagnosis as a challenge.
00:45:56Doctors call him a rare case, having regained the ability to walk.
00:46:00Today, Jason walks with the help of crutches, works out daily, and helps others do the same as a personal
00:46:06trainer.
00:46:07Certainly, there's a lot that we don't understand about how the nervous system is injured and how it recovers.
00:46:13How to feed myself, use a phone, kind of drive myself.
00:46:18And once I seen he was able to do that, I said, it's down here from here.
00:46:22We got this.
00:46:23I've seen things that I would not have predicted could happen, happen, that I can't explain.
00:46:28They told me it got to the point to where they was like, you can go.
00:46:33He's doing it.
00:46:33He's doing it.
00:46:34What Jason does, you know, getting up every day and going to the gym and making sure that every muscle
00:46:39that's still getting an appropriate signal from the central nervous system in the brain is at peak performance, is maximized
00:46:46in terms of its strength.
00:46:47And by reinforcing those neurological pathways that talk to the muscles from the brain, you know, that's got to play
00:46:53a role in why he's done as well as he's doing.
00:46:55The doctor came in and told me, said, had it been a 30, a 40-year-old person, they wouldn't
00:47:03survive it.
00:47:04With him being young, his body was so strong because he worked out every day.
00:47:10When I tell patients who come back to my office who aren't able to walk, that, you know, I want
00:47:14them to continue to do everything they can to keep their muscles as healthy as possible and to be as
00:47:17healthy as possible.
00:47:18Because at some point, I think people who are alive and young and living with these kind of problems in
00:47:24their lifetime may, you know, may be able to benefit from things like Neuralink and similar projects going on all
00:47:30over the country right now to take the mind-brain interface and be able to use that information to reprogram
00:47:37movement, whether it's actually with external exoskeleton kind of devices that would move their arms and legs or directly routing
00:47:45the signals back to muscles that are still viable and usable.
00:47:48There's nobody telling me to go to the gym. I want to do this because I want to work hard.
00:47:52It could be sports. It could be journaling. It could be running. It could be building things. It could be
00:47:59anything, anything that you use to cope that's positive.
00:48:05To be handicapped, I wouldn't say it's, I wouldn't even look at it as the physical ability part. I think
00:48:14of it as mentality. Everything starts with your mentality.
00:48:16You got to get through the door first to get into the gym. And a lot of people don't even
00:48:20want to go to their door.
00:48:21The mental fitness.
00:48:24I personally believe that the perspective we take on what happens to us can make a big difference in how
00:48:30we recover and how we ultimately do when we've injured the nervous system or other parts of our body.
00:48:36I mean, bro, I can do any and everything that you can do, really.
00:48:40I wanted him to keep the same mindset of nothing is wrong with you.
00:48:45So you think about, okay, I'm handicapped, I'm this, I'm that. You're going to be that. I don't think like
00:48:50that.
00:48:50I want you to use your mind and let your mind direct you. There's nothing wrong with you.
00:48:55And over the course of a year and a half or two years afterwards, I mean, Jason ultimately came, you
00:49:00know, walking back into the office.
00:49:02But when I saw him walking, man, that was just, and I said, if anybody can do it, he could.
00:49:09You know, give me a second. It's a little, it's a little emotional when you think about this.
00:49:15But there is no greater reward for what we do than seeing something like what happened to Jason happen.
00:49:23I mean, that's ultimately why I did this.
00:49:26I mean, everyone has their own motivations.
00:49:27And certainly what I do affords me a lot of benefits in life and a lot of luxuries in life
00:49:33that other people don't have.
00:49:34And certainly, you know, I'm sure as a young man deciding what he was going to do with his life,
00:49:40those things are things you should think about.
00:49:41But the things that are the most valuable and most rewarding are things like this.
00:49:46I mean, at this point, Jason doesn't really need me any longer.
00:49:48I mean, he's, you know, he's as much better as he can be.
00:49:51And as surgeons, he's not going to need any more surgery from me.
00:49:54I may continue to check in with him on an annual basis just to kind of, so for myself, really,
00:49:58to see just what he achieved in his life because he's come so far already.
00:50:03So how have you been since February when I saw you last?
00:50:05Doing a lot of working out.
00:50:07A lot of working out. I can see your muscles are certainly bigger than mine. Straighten the leg out for
00:50:10me.
00:50:11You know, interestingly, you still have some spasticity there.
00:50:14Can you pull that toe up towards the ceiling at all?
00:50:16Yeah.
00:50:17You know, the spasticity is probably one of the reasons why you can, you know, you have enough towing those
00:50:22legs that allows you, it's almost like a, it's almost like you're winding a spring up, you know, and you're
00:50:27letting it unwind and you're harnessing that energy.
00:50:30So the spasticity keeps your muscles tight.
00:50:31So when you squat down with all that weight, that weight is pushing you down, but your muscles, because they're
00:50:35tighter than they were before, and they're tighter than mine, because of a little bit of the problem with your
00:50:40brain inhibiting your reflex arcs, because that's what happens.
00:50:44I mean, your brain basically tells your leg for the muscle to be looser, and when the brain can't get
00:50:50that signal down, the muscles are tighter.
00:50:52So you're like a wound-up coil.
00:50:55And when you let that weight push you down, that 400 pounds or that 350 pounds push you down, you're
00:50:59storing a lot of energy in those muscles, because you're stretching them, and they want to rebound.
00:51:04And so that allows you to, you know, really, when you activate the muscles then, you get this, you're harnessing
00:51:09that extra energy that you've stored in them by forcing them down, just like taking a spring and compressing it
00:51:13and then letting it go.
00:51:15So that's one of the, that may be one of the reasons why you can lift, you can squat so
00:51:18much with those legs.
00:51:19It's amazing.
00:51:20I mean, you know, you've done really, really well.
00:51:22You're the exception, not the rule.
00:51:25In your recovery.
00:51:26And part of that was you, part of that was me, part of that was what happened to your spinal
00:51:32cord at the time all this happened, and part of that is, you know, what the good Lord and the
00:51:37universe had in store for you or had in their plans for you.
00:51:40I mean, so there's lots of things that contributed to that, but there's no question that at the end of
00:51:43the day, your recovery is not what we typically see.
00:51:47There's so much we don't understand.
00:51:48I mean, like a lot of the universe is still, you know, a black hole to us or, you know,
00:51:55a black box.
00:51:56The nervous system's the same way.
00:51:57There's really so much we don't understand.
00:51:59We're learning every day.
00:52:00I mean, people are mapping the entire human brain and trying to map every connection and help us to understand
00:52:05it.
00:52:05We know so much more about the proteins that make it up and how they encourage regeneration or discourage it
00:52:12depending on where in the brain it is.
00:52:13But there's still so much, so much we need to learn.
00:52:16Even though, you know, his dreams may have been shattered as far as the athletic part of it, but all
00:52:23in all, something even greater came.
00:52:26Hey.
00:52:29Papa, you going to smile for the camera?
00:52:32You going to smile for the camera?
00:52:33There you go, yeah, grandma.
00:52:35Hey.
00:52:36My papa, you know, I don't know.
00:52:37I got to look at the phone.
00:52:38Hey, granny, mimi.
00:52:41Give me camera, hi.
00:52:42Say hi.
00:52:44Recoup Foundation.
00:52:48Hey, yo, what you doing out here, boy?
00:52:50What you doing out here?
00:52:50Coaching, man.
00:52:51How you been, bro?
00:52:52You coaching?
00:52:52Good.
00:52:53What?
00:52:55There you go, coach, too?
00:52:57What?
00:52:58I ain't going to lie.
00:52:59It was a hard competition when we played, bro.
00:53:01Now, I don't know.
00:53:03Big Tyrone wasn't just poking me with safety pins.
00:53:07I remember ninth grade.
00:53:08Ninth grade.
00:53:10Yeah, ninth grade.
00:53:10Wow.
00:53:11We about ourselves on that one.
00:53:12No.
00:53:12Yeah, you played right there.
00:53:1210th grade.
00:53:13Ooh.
00:53:14I just got done talking about 10th grade.
00:53:16They were like, what's a funny moment at Lowry High School?
00:53:18Yeah.
00:53:18You know I had to say school, man.
00:53:19Right now, we're at my old Pee Wee football field right now where it all started.
00:53:24I'm about to give a donation.
00:53:26$1,500 to Lawrence Seahawks to be able to fund their youth program.
00:53:31So it means a lot for me to be able to give back and do for them.
00:53:33Didn't nobody do it when I was young, so I'm using my platform and my own money to try to
00:53:39help
00:53:39y'all.
00:53:40You know, it ain't really just about me at the end of the day.
00:53:42And just kind of this whole documentary to kind of help explore Laura and show the world
00:53:47of Laura.
00:53:49You're welcome.
00:53:49Let's throw it out there in here.
00:53:51Plenty of like y'all, you know?
00:53:53Yeah.
00:53:54Don't be scared just because y'all are from Laura, man.
00:53:56I mean, the world way much bigger than y'all.
00:53:59So, I mean, y'all can make y'all mark as well.
00:54:01You ain't got to be from nowhere special.
00:54:03A lot of people, they get a platform like this and they don't really show what's in their
00:54:07hometown and stuff like that.
00:54:09So, it's bigger than me, brother.
00:54:10The reason that I do all this is for kids.
00:54:13You know, nobody do it for me.
00:54:15He's drawn more to helping people.
00:54:17And for him to take off and to do that, I'm proud of him.
00:54:21My papa, he passed away last year, a week before my birthday.
00:54:29My papa, he never really would admit to me, you're doing good.
00:54:35Like, my whole family is like that.
00:54:36I always tell them, if I'm doing great, do not tell me I'm doing great.
00:54:39Tell me I'm doing very bad or tell me I'm not progressing.
00:54:43And my papa, he never would tell me ever in my life, you're doing good.
00:54:49He always tell me, man, you need to improve, you need to do this, you need to do that.
00:54:52They kept me on my toes.
00:54:54Two weeks before my papa passed, he told me, he said, he finally admitted to me, yeah, you're
00:55:00doing good.
00:55:01You're doing very good.
00:55:02I see your body very strong and stuff.
00:55:06And that made me happy when he passed away to actually get him admitting to me that I'm
00:55:12doing something good.
00:55:12So that's what carries out my character now, knowing that those two, my guardian angels
00:55:18are watching me and knowing that, you know, I'm putting together something and using my
00:55:24platform to be able to help other people and kids, to be better people in a world that just
00:55:31promotes just so evil and demonic things.
00:55:34So, you know, that's why I said another reason why I was probably sent back here to be able
00:55:39to let people know that, you know, God is real.
00:55:41And from the worst outcome, you still can have a little bit of hope and continue to be able
00:55:46to make it in life as long as you just believe in sacrificing what you think you know.
00:55:51If I told Jason, I said, God did that.
00:55:53I said, God did that.
00:55:55You know, he gave you the mind frame that, hey, no matter what, it ain't about this person
00:56:01or that person or nothing, it's just about you and him.
00:56:04I still remember what you told me while we was practicing on basketball and all that.
00:56:08You told me, you said, if I don't make it, you got to make it.
00:56:11Since now he's, I told him a celebrity that with his fitness training and stuff, I said,
00:56:17you're going to have to get mama in the gym.
00:56:18I said, we can't do too much, though.
00:56:20I said, mama can't do all what you be doing, but I get out there and try.
00:56:24But we have a good relationship.
00:56:26Like I said, he'll come by and visit.
00:56:28He FaceTimed me yesterday and had the grandbaby.
00:56:33I call him my grandbaby because I know I never have any, but his son on the screen
00:56:38and he just looking at me like, who is she?
00:56:41Like he wanted to say, who is she, daddy?
00:56:43Who is she?
00:56:44But he looked at me, he kind of got the finger up and waved at me.
00:57:18One of the things I learned from taking care of people like Jason and taking care of young soldiers
00:57:22on the battlefield in Iraq is that sometimes people who look like they have no chance of recovery
00:57:28can have very meaningful lives.
00:57:30To me, as a mother, it made I bond stronger.
00:57:33If you asked me when I operated on him and saw him for the first several days and weeks afterwards,
00:57:38he was with us in the hospital about two weeks before he went to rehab.
00:57:42You know, I was a little discouraged seeing, you know, not as much improvement as I hoped.
00:57:48Because if I can see you in a bad space and you come and you beat all the odds, there's
00:57:56hope for me.
00:57:57Because a lot of people who come in with an injury like this, if they're going to get as much
00:58:01better
00:58:01as Jason has, they show that signs very early on.
00:58:04To accomplish anything that I want to do.
00:58:06It's very easy to become very cynical about what we do sometimes when you see a lot of people injured
00:58:11who don't get better.
00:58:12But you always have to treat every patient who comes to that door like they have that capacity.
00:58:16There's no, I can't do, I want to do.
00:58:19It's I'm going to do.
00:58:21He gives me the same energy that I gave him.
00:58:24Push.
00:58:24I mean, I would use the word miraculous.
00:58:26I don't use that word very often.
00:58:27And the miracle comes in lots of different forms.
00:58:29Don't stop.
00:58:30Let's go.
00:58:30It's the miracle of somebody like Jason who believes he's going to be better
00:58:34and makes that happen through, you know, force of his own sheer will.
00:58:38This whole entire documentary, my whole life, I've never thought about it.
00:58:43I've just done it.
00:58:44And when you realize what can come great from just doing it and not complaining.
00:58:49I think he's been like that since he was a little boy.
00:58:53He always had that mindset that I can do it.
00:58:56And he did it.
00:58:58Doctors who still believe patients can get better and do everything they can at the moment,
00:59:01they first interact with them to try to do everything they can to get them to the point that they're
00:59:05better.
00:59:05He has the mindset of an old man just to, hey, I know what I got to do and I'm
00:59:11going to do it.
00:59:11So if his dad taught him that, his dad taught him a good thing.
00:59:16I just thought it in him early, but now he can see that tomorrow ain't promised.
00:59:22You can lose everything today.
00:59:23The baddest thing that can happen to you if you have nothing is to do nothing.
00:59:30Never, never say no.
00:59:32You can't do anything.
00:59:34Hospital systems that are better at getting people taken care of and the science that we're doing,
00:59:38it's going to make Jason's story hopefully more common in the future and not less common.
00:59:43And I said, start letting your son teach him to get up and work hard every day.
00:59:48Don't allow nobody to give him nothing.
00:59:50You only get out of this world what you put in it.
00:59:52You know, miracles still happen.
00:59:54You hold on to the 1% and hope that someday it's 100%.
00:59:57So keep working.
00:59:58We're all born with nothing, but we can become something.
01:00:01It's on this.
01:00:02So I said, you can have a choice whether you do it or you don't.
01:00:26The period of time is not something that we put in it.
01:00:27It's on this.
01:00:32It's great.
01:00:33It's on this.
01:00:44It's a joy to dance.
01:00:45This moment is because no one way there's a nature that I know it does not hurt.
01:00:45You can do it too.
01:00:52It's a desire to be so hard because you can always win it.
01:00:52It's hard to be استwounded to anything.
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