Road to recovery

Adam Denny used to hear the roaring sound of the water while strapped to a harness and gliding across the water. He would soar 30 feet in the air and enjoy a bird’s eye view in the complete silence that hung above the water. While a student at Cal State Long Beach, Adam Denny was a kiteboarder and a member of the wakeboarding team.

“I was hooked the first day I tried,” Denny said. “I was always the first one on the water and the last one off.”

But in December 2006, Denny was forced to stay off the water.

Denny, Mitch Bradshaw – Denny’s cousin – and Denny’s sponsor, Enrique Zuniga, were taking a trip to Utah to go snow kiteboarding at Skyline. On the way to Utah, they stopped at Big Pine Motorsports to rent snowmobiles.

The three of them were waiting in a parking lot next to a big crate, when a Ford F350 pulling a trailer full of snowmobiles made a sharp turn.

“He turned [the truck] so sharp, the trailer pinned and crushed my knee between the wooden crate,” Denny said. “I’m just looking at my leg getting crushed.”

Denny noticed that the man didn’t realize he had hit anyone, so he continued to drive away.

Denny laid on the freezing snow, screaming.

“I jumped on his leg and started assessing where he was injured,” Bradshaw recalled.

Paramedics came and took Denny to a local hospital, where he learned he had a fractured tibia. After the surgery, doctors told Denny that he would need physical therapy.

He still had chronic pain in his knee, and the doctors couldn’t figure out why when his knee was structurally fine.

Denny said one doctor saw signs of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, a chronic pain condition in which high levels of nerve impulses are sent to an affected site, and said it was a rare disease.

“I’m like the one percent that has it,” Denny said. “It [is] one of the worse things you can get [because] there is no cure.”

After the diagnosis, Denny’s life took a sharp turn.

He couldn’t drive a car or walk, so he used crutches from 2006 to 2009.

Adam’s dad, Fred Denny, said watching him in pain was like being tortured.

“It was heart-breaking as a parent, he spent a majority of time in bed,” Fred Denny said.

In 2009, Denny saw Dr. Robert Schwartzman at Drexel University in Philadelphia. Denny said Schwartzman is the only doctor in the world who specializes in treating this disease.

“He puts his patients in a temporary coma for two weeks, for four hours a day, and uses Ketamine (animal tranquilizer) to help trick the brain out of the fight or flight syndrome,” Denny said. “There was only a 25 percent chance that the procedure would be successful.”

The procedure wasn’t a success, but Denny’s father remained optimistic.

“If you hang in there long enough, then you’re still in the game, and if you’re still in the game, something good will happen,” Fred Denny said.

Denny attended school while he received treatment from 2009-2011. He was issued a golf cart because he was unable to walk to class, and he could only enroll in up to six units per semester because the stress of a larger workload could have made the pain worse.

“He couldn’t write,” Fred Denny said. “There were a lot of issues…it was never ending.”

Denny said he felt like he wasn’t in control of his own life because he had to rely on other people.

While he was at Drexel, Denny said he met a friend who knew Dr. Nick Kealoha in Miami, who had 100 percent success in relieving chronic pain.

Kealoha practices neuro-brain programming. He developed a specific program to diagnose his patients, using hypnosis, lasers and high-powered lights in an attempt

to remove thoughts and emotions from traumatic experiences.

“He takes the emotions out, so when I tell my story, it feels like I’m talking about someone else,” Denny said.

He saw Kealoha twice in two years, and both times, the procedure didn’t work.

Part of the procedure was for him to get rid of all his pictures, clothes and bed.

After going through this treatment for a third time, 50 percent of the pain was gone.

Denny the pain is now manageable, and he can walk again.

While Denny was searching for relief from his pain, the wakeboarding team that he had been a part of at CSULB had started to decline, and the program eventually shut down.

Denny said the team’s boat started breaking down, and people weren’t interested in the program. But reviving the wakeboarding team was a priority for Denny.

“I was kind of the motivator of,” he said. “I always thought it was important to have.”

Seniors Kate Spitzley and Patrick Hart and Denny all contributed to restarting the wakeboarding club. Spitzley and Hart filled out the paperwork to restart the program, and Denny set up a table at Week of Welcome to help the club gain more exposure.

Denny is now the captain of the team and sets up practices.

The club doesn’t have a boat, but Denny said the team is starting to fundraise and hopes to have a boat by fall 2015.

Freshman Courtney Johnston, who is on the wakeboarding team, said Denny’s story is an inspiration to everyone involved with the program.

“His dedication and hard work is a huge reason this team is possible,” Johnston said.

Johnston feels that everyone on the team can learn from Denny’s recovery story.

“We can get through anything, because what he had gone through seemed impossible to achieve,” Johnston said.

“Hopefully I will be able to ride in spring of next year,” Denny said. “I’m still a part of everything we do. I travel with the [wakeboarding] team to all the contests and all the practices.”

Denny still hasn’t kiteboarded or wakeboarded since his accident, but now that he’s healthier, he plans to get back into both in the near future.

“It would mean my life would be back,” Denny said.