Waking to a new life

Two patients learn that they suffered severe brain injuries after being in comas

Natasha Fernandez, 22, and Karol Chordas Jr., 26, share painful memories.

Both were in motorcycle accidents and suffered severe traumatic brain injuries.

Fernandez woke up from a coma at the Queen's Medical Center at age 17 and began slapping her face. "I thought I was dead. I was trippin' out."

Someone was giving her a ride on a motorcycle when it crashed head-on with a car on Feb. 3, 2003, in Waimanalo. Neither wore a helmet.

Fernandez said she flew 30 feet over the motorcycle and the car and landed on her head. The motorcycle driver lost a finger and broke two places in his leg, she said.

She was in a coma for three weeks. When she awoke, she said, "I couldn't talk or move my arms. I thought it was just a dream. They kept telling me I was in an accident. I looked up and asked, 'Why, God? Why me?'"

She was transferred to Rehab Hospital for three months. The last thing she remembered was going to Tony Roma's for takeout two days before the accident, her mother said. She does not know where she had been going on the motorcycle.

Chordas' motorcycle collided head-on with a pickup truck on Waipahu Depot Road on May 31, 2003. Both drivers were 22.

Gas started leaking from his tank; it caught fire and so did he, he said. A friend he had been following put out the fire on him, Chordas said. Another man finished putting out the bike fire with fire extinguishers.

He had burns, a fractured left arm, lacerated spleen, shattered left leg, broken left clavicle and traumatic brain injury despite a helmet and other protective gear.

Chordas was in a coma for 2 1/2 months, first at Queen's, then at Rehab Hospital. He said he learned later that Rehab usually will not take a patient still in a coma. A doctor agreed to take him but said if he did not wake up in two weeks, he would be sent to a nursing home.

"I woke up after two weeks. Somehow I managed to skip over three to four stages of waking up from a coma."

It was the middle of the night when his "brain clicked on," he said. "What was going on? I couldn't move." A nurse told him he was in an accident, he said.

He lost two to three weeks of memory, "which I think is a good thing," he said. "Who wants to remember flying through the air, hitting a truck, breaking your arm and knocking your head really hard on the ground and falling into a coma?"

He said a doctor told him, "People don't usually recover from this type of injury."

Chordas and Fernandez met in a Brain Association of Hawaii support group, organized by Lyna Burian, association director. Burian's 30-year-old son, Albert, suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 16.

He was running from Punahou School to catch a bus, and "a tow truck hit his head like a baseball bat," Burian said. He is teaching chess now at the Nuuanu YMCA.

Fernandez and Chordas both say they would have died if not for their parents: Fernandez's mother, Pattieann Lacio, and Chordas' parents, Karol and Teresa Chordas.

The two patients discussed their struggles to recover in an interview at Rehab Hospital where they greeted nurses and aides who cared for them on the brain injury floor. "This is where we were stationed," Chordas said.

"They're awesome here," Lacio said, explaining she was told "to prepare for the worst" because her daughter's injuries were so severe. "She had to fight her way back."

Fernandez was left-handed before the accident, but her "whole left side went out" and she had to relearn everything with her right hand, she said. "It was like I was a little baby. I had to learn to use the bathroom, to breathe and talk."

"It took five people to hold her up in the therapy room," her mother said. "She couldn't sit up. She didn't have any balance."

She was angry and punched and fought the therapists -- a symptom of traumatic brain injury. "I didn't know what happened to me, and it was painful what they wanted me to do," Fernandez said.

Chordas had tendon transfer surgery in October to repair a deformed wrist so he can use it without wrist braces, but might end up with wrist fusion to hold it stable so it will not drop down, he said.

Because of problems with his short-term memory, he carries his phone constantly and sets it to remind him of things to do.

Chordas graduated from Hawaii Business College and worked three years as a computer network administrator's assistant at Tripler Army Medical Center before the accident. He is in the digital media program at Leeward Community College and volunteers on weekends as a narrator at the Hawaii Historical Railway.

"It helps my memory," he said. "I memorize the whole narration, 1.5 hours."

He no longer rides a motorcycle, but passed a rehab assessment test for a driver's license.

Fernandez said she decided when she left the hospital at age 18 that "life was going to be hard for me" and that she needed an education. She worked with a tutor at Wahiawa Community School and graduated last year from Mililani High School.

Her next goal is to take a rehab driving assessment to get a driver's license. Then she plans to pursue higher education.

Fernandez and Chordas live with their families in Mililani and go to the Mililani Rehab Center.

Both said they have problems with anger, which is common with traumatic brain injuries, and they are trying to control it. "I just snap," Fernandez said. "I'm saying 'sorry' every day."