Peoria man making strides after severe brain injury

PEORIA - Alex Shelton can't study the way he used to, which, let's be honest, was really not very much at all.

Alex's brain is no longer wired the way it was when he nailed an Ivy-eligible ACT score in high school years ago. So trying to decipher his anatomy and physiology textbook now is an arduous, tedious, read-out-loud, then read it all over again test of endurance and of faith and of determination.

He expects the eff ort to one day earn him a master's degree in speech pathology from Illinois State University.

But this new excruciating way to study?

"It's a pain in the butt," he says, and then he laughs the big laugh - the laugh that never betrayed him despite the rigors of his recent journey - of the self-described loudest guy in the room.

"He's a goof," says his mother Tammy Shelton.

"The same old Alex."

The same old Alex isn't exactly the same old Alex, even his mother knows that.

Almost five years ago, Shelton, who is now 24, sleepwalked off a hotel rooftop in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and suff ered a severe brain injury that doctors warned would probably kill him.

A story about the early stages of Shelton's recovery appeared in this newspaper in October 2008, nine months after his headfirst fall while attending a weeklong leadership program in Mexico. An update seemed overdue.

But first, an abbreviated review.

The road to recovery A week after his fall, Shelton was flown home by air ambulance from Mexico to the intensive care department at Peoria's Methodist Medical Center, where he stayed for two months.

That was followed by a stay at a rehab hospital in Chicago, then a room at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, and then a transfer to Methodist Acute Rehab Center on May 14, 2008. After friends and family rebuilt the basement of the family's into a wheelchair-accessible living space, Shelton came home in June.

In many ways, the Alex Shelton of 2008 barely resembles the Alex Shelton of last week. He has gone from wheelchair, to walker, to four-pronged cane, to cane, to braces in his shoes, to walking. Tendon-stretching surgery successfully relaxed most of the stiff tone in his arm and leg.

His eyes are clear and his voice is strong. Short-term memory remains a problem - it's the reason he has difficulty retaining his studies - and there remains the hovering spectre of seizures, which have kept him from even the chance of being able to drive a car again.

He's hoping for a medical solution to his independence in the form of a sortof pacemaker for the brain that allows patients to stop a seizure at its earliest onset.

He craves being on his own.

"I really want to be able to get the hell out of my mom's house," Shelton said recently while seated in the beat-up "Alex chair" in front of the television set in the family room of his parents' home in Peoria. "I'm sorry, Mom, you know what I mean."

"Yes, Alex, I know what you mean," Tammy Shelton said.

They both laughed.

"Comedy and laughter are the best medicine," Shelton said, except for, you know, "actual medicine."

Brightest day coming He's taking college courses, one semester, one class at a time. For now it's at Illinois Central College. His goal is to get back to ISU, where he was a 4.0 grade-point student before his fall, and become a certified speech pathologist.

"I'd like to come back and go where I'm needed and maybe help others with brain injuries," he said. "I know what they have gone through."

He wears the gold band that his grandmother wore on the index finger of his left hand. She died four months before his accident. He believes she had something to do with his survival.

"I believe she was with me that day," Shelton said, twisting the ring with his right hand. "I think she was watching out over all of us."

"I'm just so thankful that he's doing so well when we were told he would be a vegetable for life and that we should look for a nursing home," Tammy Shelton said. "I'm thankful he's still around and still my guy."