We all pray for miracles but this mother in Texas had her prayers answered in real time as she got her son back. This is such an inspiring story about a mother’s love and making sure she never gave up on her child.
15-year-old Torianto “Junior” Brinson was a star student at his highschool in Missouri City, Texas. The general consensus was that Junior had a very bright future ahead of him. He was taking college courses, getting solid grades, excelling in sports and active in band.
Just as he was set to embark on even better things, he met with an unfortunate accident. He had been thrown out of the car, as the car crashed. The car was completely totaled.
“One minute after it happened, my daughter called me, and she was hysterical. ‘Mom, you need to get here now.’ So, they were literally around the corner from the house. So, we drove on the street. Had to get out of the car, run, and saw him lying there,” Junior’s mom, La’Kisha recalls.
She says there they discovered four medics working on her son. Her son was then transported to Texas Medical Center by Life Flight where medical professionals pronounced him to be dead.
“They told us that he was gone, there was nothing they could do, and I remember asking them, ‘You’re just going to let my baby just sit here?’ and they were like, ‘There’s nothing they can do,’” says La’Kisha.
She then asked her family to pray. She bent over her son’s body and prayed as hard as she could. And the prayer worked.
“I was holding his hand and I prayed and told him, ‘Junior, I need you!’ A minute later, I saw his hand move,” she emotionally recounts. That movement became the catalyst for his treatment and recovery.
He was immediately taken into emergency surgery for his traumatic brain injury.
The first few months of his recovery were incredibly hard, he spent them in a semi coma at Memorial Hermann. But slowly he had made enough progress for him to be shifted to TIRR Memorial Hermann.
“He was still having trouble moving around in bed consistently. Getting up and walking was very difficult. It required two people to help him,” physical therapist Dr. Liz Larkin, who is working with him said.
The medical professionals at TIRR Memorial Hermann monitored the stimulation Junior responded best to. “The amount of sound and noise and light and things like that, to give him the best opportunity for success,” explained Dr. Larkin.
As for Junior, he is now playing basketball again. The young man recalls he made varsity in his freshman year. “I want to play for the Houston Rockets,” he said.
His family has been his rock throughout all of this. While Junior does not recall anything about the accident or the months spent in rehab, he does think all of it sounds like an impressive feat.
“My son didn’t get in trouble. He went to school, band star since eighth grade, basketball. So I refused to believe that God was going to take his future, even though it didn’t look like it. We’ve even had people tell us he wasn’t going to walk or talk, but we believed,” his mother said.
Even though Junior missed a year of school, he will still graduate with his class because he was taking high school courses in junior high and college courses in high school!
The medical professionals at TIRR Memorial Hermann guided his family on how to help Junior’s progress at home. “We taught him how to brush his teeth, how to take a bath, how to eat,” his mother La’Kisha explained. “I’m a teacher, so I began to teach him fourth grade work, teach him how to comprehend what he reads again and comprehend math.”
But now Junior is back to being himself. He is taking summer courses for people of his level. His progress was only possible because of the relentless hard work of the people at TIRR Memorial Hermann and his loving family!
We are so happy to see young Junior doing well!
