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Lainie Cohen had always enforced the seatbelt rule with
her children. In fact, she wouldn't even start the car until she had
heard the click of seatbelts being fastened.
So 10 years ago, when she got the call that her 17-year-old son had been
seriously injured in a car accident while not wearing a seatbelt, her first
reaction was to be angry.
Anger quickly turned to grief when she arrived at a Toronto
hospital that summer day - Daniel, her athletic, vibrant teenager, was
fighting for his life in the operating room, having sustained a severe
brain injury when he was thrown from his friend's car.
He was in a coma for five weeks and the prognosis wasn't good.
Daniel would likely never know his parents, his name or be able to walk and
talk, one doctor said.
"It's a good thing
we chose not to believe it," Cohen told students at Vanier College yesterday morning, where she showed
photos of Daniel 10 years after that fateful day: water-skiing, playing
pool, attending his sister's wedding.
Cohen, who has written a book called Crooked Smile about her family's
experience, doesn't know if she can call Daniel's recovery a miracle.
"If a miracle is incredible determination, hard work and persistence,
then it's a miracle," she said.
Daniel's attitude, more than anything, carried him through: "He says
it's not how good you are, it's how bad you want
it."
Although his story ended better than anyone would have predicted, Daniel
has to think about his injury around the clock because it affects
everything he does.
After 10 years, he is finally able to live independently, but his speech is
still slurred, he has minimal use of his right arm and he is able to work
only part-time.
There is certainly no lack of stories about the dangers of speeding - one
need look no further than the death of Atlanta
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Thrashers player Dan
Snyder after teammate Dany Heatley's
Ferrari crashed last month - but Cohen hopes her story will perhaps be that
much more pertinent to students she speaks to because her son wasn't a
famous hockey player.
He was just a great kid whose life took a tragic turn.
"I can't necessarily
convince kids to wear their seatbelts; I couldn't even convince my
son," Cohen said. "But I want them to know they have choices and
sometimes you're not lucky and a careless mistake changes your life."
When she speaks to health care professionals, she has another message.
"My message to them is not to give up hope on someone," Cohen
said. "That statistics aren't necessarily right. That they should have
a broader perspective. That with a brain injury, you don't know what skills
remain or what can still be tapped and it doesn't necessarily follow a
sequential pattern."
The doctor who told Cohen her son would likely be a vegetable couldn't
believe it one day when he saw Daniel in a wheelchair, playing checkers.
"I'm so glad I was wrong," he told Cohen and her husband, Joel.
There is so much more to Cohen's story. Her youngest son ended up on drugs
for a while, her eldest daughter was literally crippled by the stress and
for a while Cohen had two children in wheelchairs.
Her father also died that year and her mother required major
surgery.
Not to say that she doesn't have regrets, but she has learned to celebrate
the successes.
There is a fleeting moment, when she sees Daniel with his new nephew, that
she feels sad he will likely never be a father. And then she stops herself.
"I just have to think that he makes a wonderful uncle. I have to bring
myself back to the positive."
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