Survivor begins new career 11 years after horrific crash

Kelly Brown has no memories of that November night 11 years ago.

She was found unconscious, her upper body through the driver's window against a tree trunk. Her overturned Volkswagen had careened down an embankment near Summit Bridge.

She had been in that position for 36 hours until her best friend's father, Bill Keiper, found the then-21-year-old University of Delaware student in near-freezing temperatures.

At first, Keiper thought Brown was dead. Then he saw her hand move.

Last week, Brown, now 32, graduated from New York Chiropractic College in Seneca Falls, N.Y., with a degree in acupuncture to accompany the one she earned in chiropractic last year.

This week, she will embark on a new job at Pure Wellness, a chiropractic, therapy and massage center in Stanton. It's a happy new beginning, she said.

But it has been a long road since that chilly November night.

The only details Brown can remember about the crash is what she has been told by a hospital nurse and the family and friends who frantically searched for her. She doesn't remember careening down the embankment, or how long she spent hanging out of the car waiting to be rescued.

When Brown awoke in the intensive care unit of Christiana Hospital, she didn't know why she was there. It wasn't until she was placed in the hospital's step-down unit two weeks later that a nurse told her the details, she said.

"It's a great awakening," she said looking back. "It was horrible at the time. The first year was the worst. The rehab stunk. It took me five years to get back to school, and six years to walk without staring at the ground because I was afraid I would fall and hurt my head again."

Brown sustained a traumatic brain injury in the crash but the cold kept her brain from swelling, she said. The left side of her body was initially paralyzed and she had to undergo months of physical rehabilitation and occupational therapy.

She remembers hanging out at a Middletown bar with her friends prior to the crash and missing a turn while driving to her Pigeon Run home from Old St. Georges Road to Del. 7. Her memory ends there.

"I don't remember much of it because I was placed in an induced coma," Brown said, recalling her hospital stay. "At times, the doctors said it wasn't looking good."

After three weeks, she was taken to physical therapy and told to stand up. She remembered the excruciating pain and the difficulty in the simple task of trying to walk after spending three weeks in bed. But, she persevered.

When Brown was released from Christiana Hospital, she was transferred to Bryn Mawr Rehab Hospital near Malvern, Pa., where she spent the next six months as an outpatient undergoing physical and occupational therapy.

Her mother, a teacher at the time, drove her to and from the hospital – an hour away – five days a week for the first three months. After that, the driving duties were handled by church members from St. Mark's United Methodist Church in Stanton and Delmarva Emmaus & Chrysalis Community as her day treatment was reduced to three days a week and then to twice a week.

She started driving herself in the summer of 2003, when her therapy was completed.

During that time, Brown sought chiropractic treatment at First State Health and Wellness to align her body and her hips so she could better walk.

Three years into her recovery, Brown was waiting tables and found she could no longer do the job because of pain in her left ankle, resulting from the hypothermia she had suffered in the crash. She then got a job as a chiropractic assistant at True Wellness Center in Newark and her life's direction changed dramatically.

"I was in school for education at UD and wanted to go into either special education or deaf education," she said. "I then enrolled at New York Chiropractic, and while there, started getting acupuncture treatments weekly on my ankle. It kept me walking."

While continuing her chiropractic studies, Brown then enrolled in the acupuncture course and took classes simultaneously. When she graduated from the 3-plus-year chiropractic program last April, she still had a year to go on the acupuncture program, which she completed April 18.

In the future, she envisions helping patients with brain injuries or strokes at either Bryn Mawr Rehab, the Veterans Administration Hospital or the Brain Injury Association of Delaware.

But for now, she's content to take it one day at a time.

"One of the cards I got from a friend was, 'The gods must have big plans for you," she said with a laugh, wondering how differently her life might have been had the crash not suddenly changed her path.

"I don't think I had any direction 11 years ago," Brown said. "It gave me direction. Now, I'm helping people the way that I was helped with chiropractic and acupuncture."