Corbin Raymond never thought he would daydream about going to high school.
But after almost losing his life in a severe car accident in July and spending months at Boston Children’s Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, returning to Merrimack Valley High School was all the 17-year-old could think about.
Raymond wanted to be back learning science and math with his friends – not working with doctors and neurologists through the painstaking process of learning how to walk, talk and eat again.
Then last week, he got out of his mom’s Chevy Tahoe on a Friday morning and finally re-entered the school’s doors.
“I felt lucky and almost normal again, like it was where I was supposed to be,” he said.
Raymond said it’s been a long journey to recovery since he was injured on July 4 in Boscawen while headed out for a day tubing on the river with friends. The car was speeding and crashed off of River Road, police said. Raymond had to be pulled out of the vehicle’s backseat using the Jaws of Life.
He had severe head trauma and internal bleeding – and doctors in Concord said he wouldn’t survive. If he did, they said he would have permanent brain damage.
But Raymond was transported to Boston by helicopter continued to recover there for four months – defying all odds.
Before returning to school this month, Raymond’s last grand entrance at the high school was in November, when he drove by Merrimack Valley on his way home from Boston to a crowd of hundreds of people waving and cheering for him. His story had become well-known throughout the Concord area; people kept up daily with his mother Sadie’s updates on his CaringBridge account, they made bumper stickers, T-shirts and signs supporting him.
Since returning home, he’s been out of school continuing to improve – going to six occupational, speech and physical therapy appointments a week and meeting with a tutor four times a week, his mother said.
With all the progress he’s made, school officials say he’ll still earn enough credits to graduate this spring.
He’s been going to Merrimack Valley on Fridays, working on a senior project, a requirement at Merrimack Valley High School for all graduates. For the project, he put together a toy drive for Spaulding, where he collected 170 toys for the facility’s pediatric floor.
He said the achievement of graduation is more significant to him now than it would have been a year ago.
“It means way more now,” he said. “It’s a big accomplishment.”
When Sadie remembers the state Raymond was in when he first returned home, she can hardly believe it.
Corbin could barely brush his teeth on his own, Sadie said. He was experiencing fainting spells if he tried to stand up for more than 10 minutes. He couldn’t remember what he had eaten for breakfast earlier in the day.
Now, he’s doing obstacle courses for 40 minutes at physical therapy multiple times a week and reading works like the old English epic Beowulf with his tutor.
“Everything he’s been doing, he’s handled – he’s done great,” Sadie said. “I don’t think he even sees the magnitude of what he’s done and how far he’s come.”
Raymond doesn’t remember the accident or much of his time in Children’s Hospital in Boston, where he was when he first arrived in the city.
At the time he was suffering from a fractured spine, broken collar bone, fractures in his skull, broken bones in his face, two broken shoulder blades, fractures in his rib cage, and later, an aneurysm and an infection in his finger.
Raymond said he hasn’t yet been able to bring himself to read his mother’s entries on CaringBridge, where she documented his slow recovery through the months.
Seeing the photos of himself from after the crash was hard enough, he said.
“It put me in shock, like, ‘That was me? I was that bad?’ ” he said.
He said a lot of people have asked him this past year if he feels robbed.
Robbed of doing normal teenager things, like spending his senior year of high school with his friends. And much bigger things, like feeling in control of his own body, and his short term memory.
But Raymond said those thoughts are fleeting in his mind. He said he mostly just feels lucky.
“I’m just happy I’m here,” he said, sitting at Concord Starbucks with his mom drinking an iced coffee Wednesday. “After what I’ve been through, it just feels amazing to be alive.”
Sadie said that’s the attitude Raymond has had throughout his entire recovery process, no matter how hard things got.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people who’ve been through things like this, and you often feel like it’s the end of the road, you focus on the negative and all you’re not going to be able to do,” She said. “He’s just been positive. Things aren’t perfect, we just have a new reality. Things are different, but they’re still great.”
“It’s not where we thought we were going to be, but we’re thankful he’s still here,” she added, smiling.
Raymond’s story has inspired many people along the way. He’s even been asked to tell it to a class of Harvard Medical School students.
There’s a class there this semester on the power of storytelling in the healing process, and the physician and psychologist running it have asked him and Sadie to help out.
Raymond has also been asked to speak at the New Hampshire Traffic Safety Conference in May, his mother said.
Sadie said she was also approached to write a book about her experience caring for her son, which will be released in October. She created a Kickstarter page where people can support the project.
“Everyone kept saying, ‘You’re here for a reason Corbin, You’re here for a reason,’ ” she said. “Maybe it’s to tell his story – maybe that will help save someone else.”
She said one lesson she hopes people learn from the story is the danger of speeding. One of the four boys in the car crash had an application on his smartphone – Life360 – that reported the car going close to 100 mph when it crashed. Corbin doesn’t remember the crash itself, so they don’t know exactly why the car was traveling so fast. She assumes it was the boys fooling around.
She said she’d like to go to driver’s education classes and share Corbin’s story with students – especially teenage boys.
“We’re lucky that we have this positive outcome, but it’s usually not that way,” Sadie said. “Most people aren’t as lucky as Corbin was.”
Raymond said his experience with the crash has made him realize something he might want to study in college: physical therapy.
“I want to help people, tell them what I’ve been through,” Raymond said. “Tell them my story – give them inspiration.”
But there’s still plenty of healing left to do. The biggest things he needs to work on now are motor skills in his right arm, Raymond said. A symptom of his brain injury has been that his right arm and hand has a trouble following cues from his brain.
His occupational therapist said the skills will come back in time with more practice, Sadie said.
In August, Raymond will meet with a neuropsychologist to do an extensive test that will help determine to figure out how much healing his brain has done – and what is still left to do.
Raymond said he plans to walk at graduation and attend prom. His sister, Grace, is a junior this year and they’ll be able to experience prom at Merrimack Valley together, Sadie said. Raymond said he hasn’t asked anyone to be his date yet.
After graduation, the family is going to have a big party at the house to celebrate his accomplishment.
(Leah Willingham can be reached at 369-3322, lwillingham@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @LeahMWillingham.)