14 minute read
Fathomless Fortitude: Courageous Tales of Recovery & Reinvention
BY JAKE TEN PAS
Emotions run high when discussing experiences that alter the course of a life. Whether it’s been 20 weeks or 20 years, some memories never diminish, even if those who lived them refuse to let themselves be broken by the trauma. The three individuals who shared their accidents, ailments, and attacks for this story have persevered in ways that most readers won’t ever have to understand. Each has emerged with a new approach to life that demonstrates the resilience and adaptability inherent in the best examples of humanity.
ONWARD & UPWARD
You can never be too careful. On the other hand, without risk, there is no reward. Brooke Daniel is living proof that both adages are true. Her vigilance led to the diagnosis that spurred her to eventually get life-saving surgery, but it’s her daring — along with the caring of her family — that continues to deepen the meaning of her existence.
“I thought I was being overly cautious by going to the hospital because I had really slight tingling on my right side,” she says, reflecting on what drove her to seek medical attention one fateful weekend in Bend. Between finishing a workout and departing for her daughter’s tennis match, she learned she had a small brain bleed from a cavernous malformation in her brainstem.
This was the start of several months of diagnoses and surgeries, resulting in Daniel struggling to walk, losing feeling on the right side of her body, and suffering extreme dizziness and a lack of coordination. For a woman who previously delighted in lifting weights, playing tennis, and generally staying active with her family, it was a severe setback, but one that she continues to persevere through with grace and sharp-eyed pragmatism.
“I cry a lot, don’t get me wrong, but it is what it is, so let’s move forward,” she says, and that’s exactly what she’s attempted to do. At first, she walked on treadmills and then started looking for a personal trainer willing to meet her where she was at in her recovery. On Oct. 3 of last year, she finally found exactly what she was looking for in a rather surprising place — the MAC Climbing Gym — and a compassionate instructor, Parker Tanguay.
“Climbing has been the first thing I’ve found that is like, oh, yeah, this is a sport again, which I really liked,” Daniel says. “It’s also the first thing that all four of us can do, the kids and me. Everyone can be at a different level, but we can all climb together.”
Daniel has always taken pride in her strength and independence, and learning to rely on her family both for emotional support and basic household tasks has taken serious adjustment. Her employer has made accommodations to allow her to continue to work as a CPA from home, although her capacity to juggle tasks has diminished.
“Pretty much every aspect of my life has been impacted, but the silver lining is I’m home all the time, which is nice for the kids. I would love someday to be able to walk the neighborhood again, but I can’t do that right now. I can garden, but even that is harder. I know it could be way worse, so I try to be grateful for what I do have.”
When Daniel’s brother visited, the two decided to try climbing, which had been recommended to her as rehab. “It’s really good for that,” she reports. “It forces me to my right side, and it simulates a crawling pattern. Plus, we met Parker, and he treats me like a normal person. Some days I can barely hold onto the wall, but it’s been great.”
The experience has been powerful for Tanguay, too. “I knew this was going to be different, but I like a challenge,” he says. “Brooke is the sweetest, kindest person. I instantly wanted to see her get up on the wall a few times, get her back to being active. I knew that there was resilience, and that she could really come into her own here.”
At first, Daniel fell on nearly every other hold, but over the past five months, she’s steadily improved. Now she gets up the wall five or six times per session before she calls it quits. “The fact that she can grab these holds when she can’t even feel on her right side is incredible,” Tanguay adds. “Working with Brooke and her kids has become one of the most fulfilling things in my life. I feel like I’ve become a little part of their family.”
Tanguay explains that climbing is first and foremost a whole-body workout perfect for someone going through what Daniel is. Every part of a person must cooperate to lean, turn, and raise them up. “The second biggest thing is cognitive. Each route you climb is a puzzle. You have to figure out different ways to contort your body.”
At first, Daniel fell on nearly every other hold, but over the past five months, she’s steadily improved. Now she gets up the wall five or six times per session before she calls it quits. “The fact that she can grab these holds when she can’t even feel on her right side is incredible,” Tanguay adds. “Working with Brooke and her kids has become one of the most fulfilling things in my life. I feel like I’ve become a little part of their family.”
At the time of the interview, 18-year-old son Caden is in Hawaii, and Maya, 11, is in school, but Julianne, 17, is there to support her mom, and weighs in on watching her persevere through the recent period of personal growth. “What she’s been through is so much! Both of my parents are the biggest fighters,” she says, also referencing her dad, who’s had multiple strokes. “I just want to take that into my own life and never give up.”
Her mom approaches each day with this sense of the possible, focusing less on what’s been lost and more on what can be gained. Daniel knows she’ll never live the same life she did before her brain injury, but she’s proud of who she is now and finds great joy in continuing to push herself.
“I don’t think there is a limit on improving a little bit each day,” she says. “I’m trying not to think about how I used to be. That’s pointless. I’m focusing on what I can do and not putting a limit on it.”
PEDAL TO THE METTLE
When MAC Personal Trainer and Spin Instructor Patrick Fisher wrapped up his second revolution around Powell Butte and turned back toward the club on the morning of Oct. 12, 2024, it seemed like the ideal end to a perfect fall day. He and his riding companion cruised along the Springwater Trail, approaching Tilikum Crossing, and he cautiously ascended a berm like he had countless times before.
The next thing he knew, EMTs were asking him questions en route to the emergency room. There he was told he’d broken the sixth and seventh vertebrae in his cervical spine, as well as his collarbone and four ribs, puncturing a lung in the process. Reconstructing the accident later, he found out he’d flipped his bike, landing on the right side of his face.
Six months in a neck brace and an agonizing rehabilitation awaited him. Who knew if he’d ever be able to bike or pursue his old occupation again?
Yet on his second day in the hospital, he shocked his care team by standing up on his own. On Feb. 24, he returned to work as a personal trainer, four months — not six — after the start of his ordeal.
“It’s surreal. It was like an out-of-body experience, realizing that actually happened to me,” he says sitting casually in a chair at MAC. The 59-year-old looks at least a
decade younger than he is, and while the trauma remains fresh, he radiates health in defiance of all expectations.
“I thought I was done. I hoped there was something at the MAC for me that I could do that wouldn’t involve personal training or anything else physical,” he recalls. “I thought, ‘I’m going to lose all my clients. My classes are going to be given to somebody else.’ I didn’t lose anybody, and that was humbling.”
In fact, Fisher was floored by the number of clients and coworkers who came to visit him in the hospital, describing it as extremely touching. As he learned to adjust his bed to achieve a quantum of comfort, and rely on his wife to help him with the most basic daily activities, this awakening to the love and support all around him fueled his healing.
“It’s the small things, you know?” he muses after sharing a newfound appreciation for a shave and a shower. When he first removed the neck brace, he remembers wondering at the pencil somehow supporting his head, but aesthetics were the least of his worries.
“Recovery was a big deal! I have two speeds, fast and completely off. I wanted to get moving as quickly as I could, and my bicycle is on a stationary trainer at home, so I could access that. Very hard to do with the collar on though. You have no upper body, no thoracic mobility at all.”
Fisher’s first attempt at a deficit pushup, starting flat on the ground and simply trying
to lift himself up, yielded only frustration. Nevertheless, he kept at it and eventually raised himself off the floor. Nothing felt broken. He wasn’t falling apart.
“I continued and strength slowly came back. I still have about 25% less strength in my left tricep, and the tingling down in my fingertips is still present. But I think over time, with just continuing to try to rehab and get stronger, that problem will fix itself,” he reports.
Eventually, pushups led to lunges and hanging deadlifts from bars. Full pullups followed, and one day Fisher realized he was ready to return to work. Now, he’s focusing on staying safe as he gets back to riding his bike, propelling himself back into the outdoors. He’s always known that movement and fresh air motivated him, but he’s also learned something about himself and others through the pain and frustration of losing and regaining access to his passions.
“Everybody we come into contact with is going through something right now, or will at some point, and it could be significant. Extend grace to them, even though it doesn’t have to be discussed,” he advises. “I’ve learned to give myself grace, too. I know that I went through this, and it’s okay. It’s not a weakness; it’s just something that happened. Pick yourself up and move along. In our house, my wife and I often quote a Japanese saying. Fall seven times, get up eight.”
LIFE OVER LIMB
This year, Craig Hutto marks his 20th “Sharkiversary.” That deceptively lighthearted portmanteau references an attack he suffered at the impressionable age of 16, one that easily could have cast his life adrift. Instead, Hutto’s courage is demonstrated both by his ability to celebrate surviving and the determination he continues display in seizing every opportunity to its fullest.
“I love the quote, ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ There’s so much that I used to get worked up over, and it doesn’t matter,” Hutto says. “I don’t know if it’s from having a neardeath experience, but I think it definitely helped prioritize what’s important in my life. At the end of the day, it’s all about me getting back home to my family.”
His immediate family these days is his wife, Emelia, and their three children, daughters Tennessee and Halle, and an English Cream Golden Retriever named Barkley. It was his mom, dad, and brother, Brian, however, who were vacationing with him that day two decades ago when was attacked by a bull shark on a Florida beach.
Fishing around a sandbar with Brian, Craig suddenly felt a punch on his left thigh and was pulled underwater. He remembers thinking, “Craig, this is a dream, and you’ve got to wake up right now.” As the shark began dragging him out into the water, his brother intervened and grabbed Craig under his arm and started swimming for shore. All the while, a terrible shaking pressure gripped his leg.
Hutto plunged his hands into the murky water to try to feel what was happening, and they came up shredded. His brother punched the shark, and dragged him onto the beach, where his parents were watching in horror. It just so happened that three nurses were also nearby, relaxing on their own vacation.
Together, they were able to apply a tourniquet and stabilize him for transport, despite losing roughly half of the blood in his body.
What followed was a waking nightmare, as Hutto was transported 100 miles by helicopter to Panama City. Due to extensive tissue damage, his leg had to be amputated, and the situation was so touch-and-go that a priest was brought in to administer his last rights. When he awoke to his new reality, a sense of hopeless depression set in, and if it wasn’t for the brutal honesty of the same brother who’d saved his life, who knows how things might have turned out.
On Craig’s birthday, July 6, 2005, about nine days after the attack, Brian visited him in the hospital. Along with the many friends who came to check in on Craig, Brian barely got a response. “He finally said, ‘Craig, you need to stop being a baby. Grow up. What’s happened, happened. You can’t change it,’” the younger brother recalls. “To this day, I value that advice.”
Hutto would go on to have six or seven total surgeries at Bay Medical Center and later Vanderbilt in Nashville, both on his leg and his heavily bandaged hands. Months of hand therapy were required just to get him to the point where he could use crutches, and it was even longer before he could be fitted with his first prosthetic leg.
Another key event that Hutto says turned the tide on his recovery was an unexpected visit from two amputee athletes who told him that this tragedy didn’t have to be the end of a fulfilling life. “They showed me that I wasn’t going to be this disabled person my whole life, and they got me looking forward to getting fitted for a prosthetic leg.”
In 2006, Craig, Brian, and their third brother, Zachary, competed together in the Challenged Athletes Foundation triathlon in La Jolla, California, with the former taking on the swimming portion against all odds. “That was a little nerve-racking, but I was around a
lot of people,” Hutto admits. “Knowing the odds of it, I am a firm believer now that if I get attacked by a shark again, that’s just God’s way of telling me I’m not meant to be on this earth right now, and I’m okay with that.”
This powerful faith, along with his family and friends, have continued to propel Hutto forward. He went through a period of minor celebrity following the attack, appearing on the Tyra Banks Show and Inside Edition, as well as getting to meet Diane Sawyer. He even dealt with the indignity of having reenactments staged of his tragedy, complete with wildly inaccurate portrayals of the way he handled his bait while fishing.
He went to school to become a nurse, then a nurse practitioner, and relocated to Oregon, where he met his wife and began his life yet again. Despite the challenges of living with a prosthetic, Hutto has flourished into a proud father and thriving professional who counts his blessings regularly.
He lifts weights at MAC and counts his calories to make sure he’s able to stay mobile. While he hasn’t been able to play competitive sports since the attack, he still says, “If you challenge me at ping pong, you’re going to get destroyed.”
Down the road, Hutto might have to move into more of an administrative role at work, but for the time being, he’s happy with where he’s at, what he’s doing, and the people surrounding him.
“We joined this club to have access to the fitness center because I think that’s going to increase the longevity of my work life. The more I stay fit, the longer I’ll be able to stay on my feet. We just had Halle in November of last year, and I’ve been on paternity leave since then. I go back to work next week, but it has been really nice to spend so much time with my family.
“I’ll still think about that attack every now and then,” Hutto concludes. “But it doesn’t disable me in any way.”
