Bradley’s Story

By Jody Shackelford
Bradley Smith, a local high school student from Ash Flat, took Sept. 26, 2009 as an opportunity to enjoy a leisurely drive in his mother’s convertible sports car. A warm fall day, with the sun shining down and not a cloud in the sky, he could never have imagined the storm that lay ahead. For still unknown reasons, Bradley’s car veered from its prescribed course, crossing into oncoming traffic. The accident left him paralyzed and in a coma for weeks.
As transplant residents from Baxter County, Bradley’s mother, Natalie, never thought she would call the Spring River area her home. After the events of Sept. 26, she said she wouldn’t live anywhere else – thanks to the support and the “It takes a village” attitude of the local community.
Bradley and Natalie Smith moved to the area about six years ago. While here, she made friends and started a job while Bradley was enrolled at Highland. They began a life in the community – thought to be temporary.
“We owned a beauty shop in Mountain Home before we moved here. I always thought this was a stopping point for a while but I would someday move back,” Natalie remembered. Moving back – a thought that may have existed before that terrible Saturday, but her feelings would soon change.
The ambulance screamed towards the site of the crash, while a nurse who had seen the wreck and stopped held a borrowed t-shirt on Bradley’s head – bleeding and broken.
“Nobody really knows how it happened. They police just said that he overcorrected, but why, they couldn’t tell,” Natalie said. “He went into the other lane of traffic and hit a much larger vehicle – driver side to driver side. He didn’t have his seatbelt on and was thrown from the convertible.”
While seatbelts are lifesavers, this time, Natalie said that not having a seatbelt saved Bradley’s life. “If he would have been belted in, the rollover would have killed him.”
Natalie was at a birthday party at the bowling alley when she got the call.
“Kelly Newcomb called me and told me to get to the airport. He jokes around a lot so I didn’t believe him at first. Then he said, ‘Natalie, just listen to me.’ I had never heard that tone in his voice. So, I rushed to the airport and met Kelly and his wife Charlotte,” Natalie remembered.
“Spring River Ambulance got there very quickly and took him to the Sharp County Regional Airport. Not only did they do an amazing job taking care of my son but they had a great way of taking care of me,” she said.
In a panic, Natalie tried to rush across the tarmac to her son but it wasn’t the right time. “I wanted to go to him. The paramedic, Brandy Lane, she looked me in the eye and said, ‘You can’t go out there or they won’t land.’ I asked her to just tell him I love him and she did. They were so comforting. If they weren’t so good at their job and professional, I would have lost control.”
Police were at the airport and worked to keep Natalie safe as Bradley was transported to St. Johns Hospital in Springfield, MO.
“They didn’t want me to drive because I was so upset, so an officer took me to my house. When I got home, there were four people there that already had my bags packed and even made care arrangements for my granny, who lives with me,” she said. “All I had to do was pray and go, go, go.”
Already, the support she received was overwhelming, with helping hands shooting in from every angle.
“I had great friends in Mountain Home but there was just nothing about it that would have been the same. People would have been upset that traffic was held up kind of thing. Here, we were one of their own, people really came out. He wasn’t just my son, he was part of the community and, from that very moment, it has been like that,” she said.
The Spring River Ambulance Service didn’t let their caring stop when the helicopter took to the air.
“The paramedics that worked on Bradley didn’t even know him but they had a fundraiser for him and they came and visited him in the hospital. My friends here, business people, just so much support. Without this community, I would have lost everything. I had churches I had never gone to help me make house payments. I had people mow my lawn. The list is unreal,” she remembered.
With Bradley in the air, and HIPAA Laws keeping the hospital from releasing details of his condition, Natalie and her family were in turmoil on the drive to St. Johns Hospital.
“It was a long, horrible drive to St. Johns in Springfield,” she recalled.
When the injury list was released, it was shocking.
“Bradley had a traumatic head injury and a compound fracture of the femur, which I didn’t know is the largest blood supply in the body. That is why he lost so much blood. It crushed his sternum and all of his ribs, they didn’t even count. His nose, his jaw, and a punctured lung. For a while, he was breathing with one lung but that one stopped. We had him in ICU for 30 days,” she said.
On day 27, Bradley was still on a ventilator. Now awake, he was showing signs of movement.
“Finally, he started to wake up. We took every movement as positive. He would hold your hands and it was huge. His father and I would take turns getting our hands held. We found hope and joy in everything,” Natalie said.
With frustration and fear mounting, Natalie couldn’t contain her anxiety about the ventilator.
“I finally had a melt down with the doctors. Like, ‘What are you doing to get him off the ventilator? You tell me why he can’t get off of the ventilator.’ It was a bad thing to have a melt down like that but, instead of checking three times a day if he could breathe on his own, they made it a full time job. He was off the ventilator after three days.”
Breathing on his own was a major step for Bradley, but their time at St. Johns was coming to an end and Natalie and her family had to search for another care center.
“In order to go to a rehabilitation center, you have to be able to follow five commands. For instance, ‘Bradley, hold up one finger.’ ‘Bradley, squeeze my hand.’ ‘Bradley, look left.’ The issue became that he could do some commands but he couldn’t undo them. ‘Bradley, squeeze my hand. Now let go of my hand’ – and he couldn’t do it. So, they wouldn’t count it,” she recalled. “It got to where we couldn’t take him anywhere but finally they accepted him into rehab in Mountain Home, but they said they couldn’t keep him very long.”
In the face of impossibility, the therapists at Baxter Regional had to take swift action.
“He was only there about thirty minutes when a physical therapist, a speech therapist and an occupational therapist all came in. They started to yank him up out of the bed and I got upset and said, ‘You can’t do that.’”
Protest poured from her lips as the therapists examined Bradley. “Ma’am, you may not want to be in here for this,” one therapist said.
“No, go ahead. Do whatever you have to,” Natalie conceded.
She tried to convey that she didn’t mean to sound cold-hearted, but that she understood.
“They took him straight to the parallel bars and put a belt on him. He was hoisted up and he immediately put his hands on the bars. That showed them that he had the instinct to catch himself. He was there for about a month and in that time, his speech came back for a little while and then it left again. At that time, he still couldn’t do anything for himself so we came home.”
Scared and confused, Natalie said she was amazed to find they actually had everything back in the Spring River area she needed to help Bradley continue with recovery.
“Two doors down from my office is Alicia McBride. She is an occupational therapist. Therapy Works in Highland, they taught him to walk straight. Everyone played a big role. Like his occupational therapist – she brought him from where he couldn’t sit up, to actually being able to participate in therapy. Now, he is healed. By the time she was done with him, they were baking brownies in the kitchen together,” she said smiling.
“Now he has a chance at a family and having a good life. He doesn’t have to be in the bed. Without the encouragement and support of his therapists, he wouldn’t be where he is at now. If you haven’t been through this, you might not know that you can physically force someone into recovery,” she recalled.
A plan was devised to “shock” Bradley back into mobility, something Natalie never expected to be possible.
“Picture a nine month-old baby who is crawling around and you want them to walk. You grab them up and say, ‘You’re going to walk,’ kicking those legs. ‘Nope, get up, you’re going to walk.’ That is what it was like. His legs were weak and he didn’t know he could walk. But the therapists did. They just had to unlock what he already knew how to do,” Natalie said. “Little by little, they figured out what worked for him. That is what Alicia does. She finds out what each patient needs. She caught on real quick that Bradley just needed his ego stroked, just like another man,” she said laughing.
Looking at where Bradley is today versus the bleak outlook just six months ago, Natalie remembered her biggest moment of hope.
“It is something we always used to do when he was little that I learned from my big brother – the hand sign for I love you. Before he could talk, he held his hand up and said I love you. They would tell me, ‘Oh sure Mom, he knows who you are, he loves you,’ but that sign was how I knew for sure he was there. That meant more to me than even hearing the words.”
As of press time, Bradley is finishing up treatment in Benton at the Brain Trauma Center. “He comes home for good on July 1st,” Natalie beamed.
The ordeal that brought so much pain to Bradley and his family was made better by the outpouring of compassion and love from the Spring River area. Nurturing the Smith family in their greatest time of need is a great accomplishment for both Bradley’s caregivers and the community as a whole. But if you ask Bradley, the biggest accomplishment in his recovery came at the 2010 Highland High School graduation. As tears rolled down many cheeks, Bradley received his diploma and walked with his classmates. This was more important to Bradley than anything else. Natalie recalled the time, early in Bradley’s rehab, when they asked Bradley to write what town he was from. Scrolled across a magnetic writing tablet were the words,
“Highland Rebel.”