Near the finish of last year, Kevin Pearce was one of the best snowboarders in the world. They had visions of winning more halfpipe contests, making the United States Olympic team & returning home to Vermont, perhaps with a medal.
Now they is on the verge of what feels like a greater victory: basically making it home.
Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury during a halfpipe practice on Dec. 31. They was airlifted to a Utah hospital, took days to regain consciousness & watched February’s Winter Olympics on tv from a brain rehabilitation center in Colorado. Far from the spotlight, Pearce continues every day therapy to retrain his muscles & his mind.
“Everything has been getting better,” said Pearce’s brother, Simon. “It’s been across the board.”
Pearce’s progress has been so steady that they is expected to return home to Norwich, Vt., in the next few weeks, his parents said. They expect him to be driving by year’s finish. & Pearce’s doctor believes Pearce will snowboard again.
“I don’t know that he’ll be doing halfpipes, because they don’t need him to hit his head,” said Dr. Alan Weintraub, medical director of the brain injury program at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo. “But he’s going to snowboard. I can much guarantee it.”
The short-term threat to his life came from the blood that filled the ventricles of his brain. The long-term struggle stems from a “very deep diffuse axonal injury,” Weintraub said, or the destroy in what they called the “deep wires of the brain.”
Pearce, 22, was one of the few riders to beat Shaun White in head-to-head competition the past couple of years. But while practicing a spinning double back flip called the double cork, which became the must-do stunt of the season, Pearce fell & struck his head in the halfpipe at Park City, Utah.
Pearce & his relatives, meanwhile, have been focused on small, private victories, buoyed by the support of the close-knit snowboarding community & tens of thousands of fans on a Facebook page established to give occasional progress reports & get get-well wishes.
While Pearce was made to relearn such tasks as jogging & talking, White won the halfpipe gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics. American Scotty Lago earned a surprising bronze medal & dedicated it to Pearce, one of his best friends.
“All the support — it feels like this groundswell of energy — has helped Kevin move forward in a remarkable way,” said Pia Pearce, Kevin’s brother. “I have nothing but gratitude for all the people in our lives, the people they know & the people they don’t know, that have been pulling for us this whole time.”
The latest milestone came Wednesday, when Pearce checked out of Craig Hospital & spent his first night outside of a hospital since the accident, at a home that his relatives has used as a base in the Denver area. They continues intensive treatment as an outpatient.
Now, Pearce walks independently with a barely noticeable hitch.
Pearce mostly used a wheelchair when they arrived at Craig Hospital in early February. They learned to walk with assistance, then wore a gait belt that allowed others to grab him when they lost his balance. They had 24-hour supervision in his room to prevent him from getting up, falling & striking his head again.
“If you saw him jogging & you recall his walk before the accident, you’d say it’s stiffer & more lilted,” Simon Pearce said.
“Not as relaxed,” Pia Pearce added.
One of the issues therapists remain focused on is Pearce’s once-uncanny sense of balance, which has been altered because Pearce’s eyes remain slightly out of synch. They wears glasses with a sort of prism in one lens to help the eyes track. This week, a custom-made pair arrived from Oakley, one of Pearce’s sponsors.
“Of coursework, your balance is affected by your vision,” Simon Pearce said. “Before if they looked sideways as they was jogging, they would lose his balance. That doesn’t happen any more. It’s all improving, but I’d say that the vision is a giant part of the balance thing.”
Pearce uses balance boards, shaped like a skateboard.
“It’s absolutely the coolest thing to see him be able to get on that,” Pia Pearce said. “He does it as if he’s been on it his whole life.”
But Pearce’s memory remains a bit scattered, his parents said. Sometimes they can recite his every day schedule. Other times they does not recall a recent discussion.
Simon Pearce said, “The brain memory is all still there from it.”
“His memory is all over the place,” Simon Pearce said. “Some of it is absolutely perfect. A lot of his long-term memory is absolutely perfect. & his short-term memory was gone after the accident. & it is getting better. I find it erratic.”
Yet Pearce never lost the memory of his quest for the Olympics.
“His vision wasn’t as lovely then as it is now, so it wasn’t easy to watch visually,” Pia Pearce said. “And I think emotionally they was bummed out that they wasn’t there. But they was excited for his friends, & proud of how well everyone was doing.”
The Pearces each called the Olympics a “mixed experience.”
“It was a bit hard for me knowing that — what they was feeling & how much they had wanted to be there,” Simon Pearce said.
Now Kevin Pearce approaches a different type of accomplishment, one that makes his relatives prouder. They is about to make it home.
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