Bryan Hurt His Arm

By Jeff Hiestand
I will always remember where I was when I received the news that Bryan broke his arm.  While lying between my two boys on their bedroom floor, reading The Lorax, the phone rang.  After hearing my wife say ‘he’s right here’ into the receiver, I turned to look.  She pulled the phone away from her ear and said to me ‘Bryan hurt his arm.’  
The fact is Bryan didn’t just hurt his arm, he shattered it. 

I began working with Bryan Collins when he was ten.  He was an average ten-year-old boy who enjoyed playing sports and cracking jokes with his friends.  Though once he entered the water he quickly distinguished himself from the others.   The first day I worked with Bryan I asked him to change his hand position in freestyle, only to be taken aback when, after two more repeats he asked ‘is that right?’  I did a double-take, a ten-year-old boy who listened? 

He is no different today; constantly searching for what can and will make him the best swimmer he can be.

As the age-group coach I was to work with Bryan through his thirteenth year, but after becoming the Head Coach of our club there was no change-over and I continued to coach him until he left for college.

His early-teen years were strong, but not earth-shattering.  He made his first Sectional cut as a fourteen-year-old, and what was then the ‘old’ Jr. National cut at sixteen.   It was the season of his junior year that he began to take off and started to make a serious jump towards his Senior National cuts. 

It was the summer of 2005 when we arrived in St. Mary’s, MD for the long course Super Sectional meet.   The conditions were far from perfect; we stayed at a questionable lodging establishment, and due to an over-subscribed meet, were forced to eat early in the morning, and late in the night. 

Bryan swam the 200 free on the first night of finals and missed his Senior National cut by a mere .10.  Given his lack of speed, that swim gave us plenty to look forward to the next day, which held his best event in the 400 free.  After qualifying second coming out of prelims, I gave him the only instructions I thought he needed; let the top seed set up the first 200, then get after it with his legs.

After a second warm-up he began to head to the ready room.  I leaned over the railing I was behind and was prepared to say ‘Bryan, you can’t tell me you’re not ready’.  But the only words I got out were ‘Bryan, you’.  He interrupted me mid-sentence and said ‘I’m ready’.  And he was; not only did he win the race and make his first National cut, he qualified for the National Junior team and was just .11 away from his Olympic trial cut.  No need to worry, we had the meet in Irvine in two weeks where he would have another shot that summer.

Two days later I got the call, ‘Bryan hurt his arm’.

While waiting for his friend to be picked up, they decided to pass the time cutting some doughnuts with one of his go-carts.  Pulling a turn too tightly, the one go-cart that was not supposed to flip did, and out of instinct, Bryan stuck his hand out to brace his fall.  With the tear in his skin, coupled with the amount of blood, his mother Jan knew it was bad.  But out of love for her son, she couldn’t bear to think of how bad it was.  She tried to convince herself and Bryan that the hole was caused by something that penetrated his arm, rather than his own bone which forced its way out. 

After an evening at a regional hospital, the doctors recognized the severity of his injury and Bryan was transferred to Johns Hopkins in downtown Baltimore where more experienced doctors would be able to conduct the needed surgery.  After flushing the debris out of his upper-arm, and cutting away some of his bicep due to necrosis, Bryan’s surgeon, Dr. Eglseder went to work to repair the compound fracture of his humerus and his detached elbow. 

The following week was one of ups and downs, not wanting to deal with the inevitable, still thinking we could somehow turn back time and warn him not to take any unnecessary risks.  It wasn’t until Jan innocently asked Dr. Eglseder how long he thought it would be before Bryan was able to return to his level of competition in the pool.  The answer quickly brought us back to reality, ‘you can’t be concerned with his return to swimming, you need to be concerned with him keeping that arm’.   
Not long after we decided it was best for Bryan to delay his first year of college and stay with us an extra season.  

His senior year saw five more surgeries, one which included taking bone from his hip to fill in a gap in his forearm which refused to heal.  Constant infections would flare due to the twenty-six pieces of metal in his upper arm, which needed to be there to hold everything together.  Twice that year, Bryan had to deliver antibiotics through a picc line, a semi-permanent iv, which helped combat the MRSA infection that found it’s way into his body.  Three times a day Bryan would self-administer an hour-long dose of antibiotics.  This lasted 6-7 weeks, each time. 

Although the surgeries were difficult, the rehab was even more so.  Bryan had to re-learn how to use his arm.   The first day his therapists took his arm out of the splint it fell to the ground. His arm was not able to support its own weight.  On most days he supported its dead weight by holding it with his good arm.  His ability to bend his elbow was the first hurdle, of which bending it the slightest amount left him drenched in sweat.  In fact, the first time Bryan bent his arm he did it with the help of three therapists, all leaning their weight against it.  Milestones were marked in centimeters and degrees, and over time added up to a complete bend. 

His recovery in the pool was equally slow in progress.  At first, before the wounds were closed, Bryan would ride the exercise bike.  He would pedal up to three hours a day, watching the other swimmers churn out lap after lap.  Once he was cleared to return to the pool it was limited to kicking, due to his lack of strength and mobility.  The plan was to build his legs so they were capable of carrying his races.  Even if he regained 100% of his strength in the arm, since part of his bicep was taken out he would never be as strong as he was prior to the accident.  Although we were positive about his return, we needed to be realistic about what could and would work.  So Bryan kicked the same sets the others in the group were swimming. 

The first time he swam in workout he didn’t even make it through warm-up.  The arm that once stretched out the front of his stroke now fell in the water lifeless.  Although his ongoing therapy was helping him increase his range of motion on a daily basis, it was still assisted.  Left alone, his arm didn’t bend, or stretch, or move out of the fixed position it stayed in most of the day.  Little by little he began to develop a feel for the water with his hand, but it seemed each time he took a step forward his arm protested.   Infections would develop, bringing both pain and immobility.  Draining it would be cause for an incision, which would lead to stitches that couldn’t be submerged, which took him out of the water again.  This series of events happened repeatedly throughout the year; one step forward, one step back.  It wasn’t until September of the following year, after six separate operations, that Bryan was able to get in the water and stay in it. 

Although his arm still betrayed him from time to time, his kick allowed him to rely less and less on upper-body strength.   Bryan was never one to waste a workout, seeing each day as an opportunity to become the best swimmer he could be.  After the accident was no different, it seemed he actually created opportunities to improve.  Once he got on a roll with his workouts, there was nothing stopping him.   Our first meet back, sixteen months after his accident, he swam lifetime bests in both the 200 free and back.  He was back to form.

Once recruited by a number of the nation’s top schools, all but one turned their backs on him.  By the time he was getting back into gear, the University of Texas joined UVA as the two schools he was truly interested in attending.  After a tough decision, Bryan decided to become a Longhorn. 

His last few months with us were icing on the cake; not only was he back to his level of competing, but he was headed to one of the greatest men’s programs in the country.  At the Spring Championship in Long Island, Bryan swam a great 400 free, but fell short of the Trial cut by less than one second.  We both wanted that Trial cut for each other, if for no other reason than to close the circle we went through together.  I told him I was proud of him, which was as much then as it is now, an understatement. 

A few weeks ago Bryan and I had lunch while he was visiting home.  He told me he had visited his therapist, Heather Polak at the Kernan center, where he went through his rehab.  After seeing the patients and their injuries, he said he considered himself lucky.  It reminded me of something I thought when I saw Bryan compete for the first time after his accident; he never said ‘it isn’t fair’.  Throughout his struggle he accepted whatever was thrown his way, and dealt with it one stroke at a time.  
Bryan just began his senior year at UT, and again I see it as icing on the cake.  He still has a scar that extends the length of his upper arm, but it seems only a reminder to a few of us who were with him throughout his comeback.  To everyone else who sees him on the pool deck, he has two All-American swims, the UT school record in the 400im, and a stake in this past year’s NCAA team championship.