Front Page  news  state

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Moriarty 9-Year-Old Makes 'Miracle' Recovery

By Olivier Uyttebrouck
Journal Staff Writer
       Brody Upton, 9, was alive, but barely. The crash that killed his brother in Alabama last month had so severely damaged Brody's brain that relatives thought they were bringing him home to die.
    What's happened since, family members say, is a miracle.
    "He's a fighter, and it looks to me like he's going to come out of this, and the doctors think so too," Wendell Upton, Brody's father, said Monday at University of New Mexico Hospital, where his son is hospitalized.
    Brody is likely to have some lifelong disabilities, Upton said, but doctors now say he can regain a good quality of life.
    "Right now, they're astounded," Upton said of Brody's doctors. "They say he's a miracle."
    Brody began therapy Monday at UNM Carrie Tingley Hospital, where he faces a year or more of treatment and therapy, Upton said.
    "It's not unreasonable to think that he could walk, talk and lead a fairly normal life," he said. "The doctors in Birmingham told me a completely different thing. They told me to pull the plug and let him go."
    Brody was treated at Children's Hospital in Birmingham, Ala., from July 2 until Wednesday, when he was flown to UNMH. The family lives in Moriarty.
    Alabama doctors told Brody's family that the boy's brain stem had been severed.
    "They said he'd be nothing more than a vegetable sitting in a wheelchair," said Brody's aunt, Karen McCaslin, of Floyd. "We were told we were flying him home to die."
    Brody and his older brother, Rippen Upton, 11, were critically injured June 29 when the pickup they were riding in with their mother hydroplaned on a rain-slicked road near Dothan, Ala., and slammed into a church bus.
    Wendell Upton was unable to find a flight to Alabama before Rippen died of his injuries the next day at a Dothan-area hospital.
    "I was allowed to talk to him several times over the phone and say goodbye," Upton said.
    Both boys were athletic and outgoing, their father said. Brody had planned to play football when he entered fourth grade at Moriarty Elementary School this fall.
    In 2006, Brody placed second in a statewide wrestling contest for boys 75 pounds and under, his father said.
    The brothers had traveled to Alabama for a two-week visit with their mother, Crystal Finnegan, who was driving the truck. She and 20 bus passengers were treated at hospitals and released.
    The Houston County, Ala., district attorney plans to turn over results of a police investigation to a grand jury, the Dothan Eagle reported.
    Upton said CT scans of Brody's brain appeared to verify the doctors' prognosis. "He had no brain activity when he left Birmingham," Upton said.
    Brody appeared no better when he arrived at UNM, Upton said. But an MRI revealed that the boy's brain stem remained intact, though badly injured. The MRI also found more activity than expected in Brody's brain.
    "He's moving his mouth to try to make words," Upton said. Brody also moves parts of his body in response to commands and shows no signs of paralysis. "He understands you when you talk."
    An account to benefit the family has been established at Irwin Union Bank, 7401 Jefferson NE.