(The Northern Advocate)
Up-and-coming rugby player Darryl Sabin suffered a catastrophic head injury that could have killed him. Yet the determined young man is taking his first tentative steps on the long road to recovery. Reporter Kristin Edge visited the plucky teenager at the West Auckland brain injury rehabilitation centre as Darryl and his father, Mike, work to beat the odds.
It’s not the first time he’s taken his first shaky steps in front of his proud dad.
Darryl is 18.
In a gym at a West Auckland brain injury rehabilitation centre, Mike stands face to face with his son. They’re about the same height and look into each other’s eyes.
Darryl rests his left hand on his dad’s shoulder for support.
“Step forward with your left foot Darryl,” Mike encourages. “Big step … go. Now bend your right knee.”
Darryl hangs from a blue harness, face scrunched in concentration underneath his black rugby helmet as he forces his hips to push one leg in front of the other.
His bare feet shuffle slowly along the floor in small steps. Physiotherapist Ann Sezier is on her hands and knees pushing Darryl’s right foot flat to the floor.
“Just slow down a little bit,” Mike says.
Darryl sees the funny side of this last instruction.
He emits a throaty chuckle.
Tipping their heads together so their foreheads touch, father and son enjoy the humorous moment.
It’s a bit different from the first time Darryl learned to walk.
But step-by-step Darryl is determinedly treading his way back from the brink. And walking every step beside him is Mike.
Darryl’s laboured, slow steps represent a major leap in recovery given his life had hung in the balance.
D-Day, as Mike calls it, was April 25.
Darryl, a farm worker, jogged onto the pitch leading from the front as captain of his Far North rugby team, Te Hapua. It was his second game of rugby since suffering a serious head injury in March 2007.
Darryl took the ball up from a tap and go and was hit in a tackle. He was knocked backwards, slammed his head into the ground and was knocked unconscious.
He regained consciousness and staggered off the field, where he fell into a coma and began fitting and vomiting.
He was flown first to Whangarei Hospital where staff established there was a major bleed on the right side of his brain, then to Auckland Hospital where emergency surgery relieved the pressure on his brain.
His family rallied at the hospital, including his mother Megan Whimp. Surgeons told them they had nearly lost him during the operation and he was a “very, very sick boy”.
Critical Care Unit specialist Les Galler delivered his diagnosis: “Darryl has suffered a catastrophic head injury, which is more than likely going to kill him.”
The family were told to prepare for the worst.
For the next few days they clung to hope that Darryl would survive. Hour by hour they waited. On day three they were rewarded.
Dr Galler said: “Darryl has done a few things that have surprised us . . . we feel we need to give him the benefit of the doubt.”
Darryl was responding to basic commands to wiggle his toes and squeeze a hand. A tracheotomy – a tube down his throat – was performed, a major indicator doctors held more hope for his survival.
For two months Darryl Sabin lay silent in his bed unable to speak.
His family had faith he would pull through, and again he rewarded them.
Darryl had no facial expression since the accident so getting him to smile, then talk was a major achievement.
Mike rattled off jokes to Darryl in a bid to encourage a grin. It started as a chuckle, then developed into a hearty laugh.
So when Mike said “how” and it was repeated by Darryl it was a major breakthrough.
The conversation continued.
Mike: “How are you?”
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