What goes on in the inner workings of the mind, quarantined even from the closest and dearest? Physically within arm's length, yet as far away as the outer reaches of the galaxy. Kathy’s Academic Tutoring sessions paused from their usual routine to embark on a mission to explore Matt’s fragmented recollections bit by bit, using a distinctly clinical approach. In late September 2020, as she interviewed him, Matt painstakingly documented his earliest recollections, spanning from his stay at Sunnyview Rehabilitation Hospital to his first days back home. To facilitate the process, she recorded a few of these conversations as audio-visual resources to guide his writing.

This multisensory feedback paid off remarkably. Within five weeks, Matt progressed from drafting a series of independent concepts to constructing simple compound sentences and cohesive passages—with multiple spelling errors. Examining his introspections offered a fascinating, sometimes breathtaking window into the mystery of his world. For example, he remembered actively trying to communicate with family early in his healing process—yet while no external sounds were heard, his thoughts reverberated clearly in his mind: “This is Matt trying to speak to you. My first words to Mom & Dad. It might just have been grunts. I was not frustrated. It was what it was. I wanted to say, 'Mom & Dad, can we have a conversation?' My parents were thrilled that I could talk. I wanted them to know that I wanted to leave Sunnyview as soon as possible.”

His entries highlighted a striking neurological paradox: as he was fighting to reclaim his future as a computer architecture professor, his retrospection of the months leading up to his injury was entirely dark. He noted that he “couldn’t remember my life before Sunnyview.” Gratefully, even amid severe deficits, his optimism never wavered. One reflection clearly articulated the goals that had taken shape in his quiet mind: “My goal is for me to 1) stay alive, 2) live with my parents, 3) and become a professor. My goal was to aim high & achive high.” His words showed how fiercely his internal drive had survived the injury.

His list of daily rehab activities—ranging from "thumb warring" with his speech therapist to managing ten slow steps forward and back in between parallel bars—was consistently viewed through a lens of gratitude. As he moved out of acute care, his self-assessment remained wonderfully unyielding: “My atitude was positive... I was better than most of the other patients even if I did not realise it at the time.”

As the fall progressed, Kathy’s retrospective interviews shifted focus from the sterile hospital walls to the emotional milestone of Matt finally coming home to live with us. His October 14 log captured the raw, unedited euphoria of that homecoming: “I cheared because I got to go home ... I was exstacking to see my parent’s house.”

Many remarks candidly juxtaposed this emotional high with the stark reality of adapting to his new environment. Because his old bedroom was "op a flight of stairs" and he had to rely on a walker to navigate safely, he transitioned to living in his sister’s former first-floor bedroom. Still, he firmly grasped each silver lining, beginning with "Having excellent food cooked by my mom," and culminating in a massive neurological breakthrough—after five months of silence, there was a welcome influx of details regarding his most recent life and teaching career in Pennsylvania.

On October 21, Matt noted the predictable rhythm of his weekdays—watching Jeopardy! followed by a movie—and the weekends spent watching sports. He also addressed the structured, demanding regimen of rehabilitation: “In the first few months I did a lot of activities that my parents planned for me. It also includes mental actitves. I didn’t always want to do something, but 95-99% of the time I enged up doing if anyway. In the end it was probly a good thing even if I didn’t think that at the time.”

Specifically, he credited the kitchen-table review of high school science and math for "refreshing" his baseline technical knowledge, observing that without that systematic review, “I wouldn’t have been able to do them.” His internal monitoring indicated variable progress, observing that he "advanced mentally faster than I advanced physicale."

Concluding a look-back spanning 2018 to 2019, Matt’s personal log served as a clear manifesto of his singular, unchanging ambition and his life's true north: “My long term goal is/was to become a professor again. To do this I still needed to improve my ability to do my research and to theach students... I might have been able to interface with people without further work but my motivation was to be a professor.”

Determined to build a supportive circle around Matt—and honoring his Pop Pop’s final wish before we lost him—I reached out to Lisa in February 2021. This remarkable young woman, whose life had been upended by an aneurysm-related TBI fifteen years earlier, had followed Matt’s precarious fight from the beginning. Shortly after his transfer to Sunnyview, she visited him with words of hope and dropped off several I Spy books to help him focus. Over the years, she stayed in touch through Facebook updates to cheer him on. When I asked if she would befriend Matt and call him periodically, she eagerly agreed. Talking to someone outside our immediate family instantly raised the bar.

By April, as his stamina grew, Kathy began reciting statements from a technical research paper Matt had published in 2018 and asked him to summarize each section in a single typed sentence. He approached the assignment meticulously, composing his ideas and spelling words as accurately as possible before turning to spell check. Their pace picked up, tackling roughly ten blocks of text per hour-long stretch.

Eight weeks later, with his trademark "Steady-Eddy" determination, they advanced to real-time transcriptions as Kathy read aloud from his current book, Harry Potter. However, when she closed the cover and asked for a recap, Matt couldn’t retrieve a single point she had shared—or even what he had just typed. Later, he candidly revealed a classic processing gap: he had been so consumed by the mechanics of typing that he hadn't realized retaining their meaning was part of the task. Afterward, I started asking him to review the book independently for five minutes and prepare to discuss it. Absorbing the content on his own was easier, though his short-term retention still proved unreliable—except, of course, when the topic turned to the news, weather reports, or computer engineering!

Her deliberate clinical scaffolding—moving from repeating spoken phrases to transcribing them, and ultimately to having Matt read scientific literature aloud before taking his own notes—directly targeted the neural pathways governing his language center. As Kathy later recalled, the work was slow and painstaking at first; she found that connecting the exercises directly to actual technical papers transformed the effort from a routine therapy drill into a personal mission. Grounding his rehabilitation in high-level academic content leveraged his deepest passions, fueling the unyielding perseverance Matt needed to reclaim his identity as a scholar.

I may talk the talk and even throw around terms like working memory, auditory processing, or short- versus long-term retention; however, compiling this chapter revealed that my grasp of neurological rehab was often on the skinny side—just one step ahead of the reader in piercing the foggy unknown of general cognition and executive function.

At first glance, glaring inconsistencies surfaced on the page. How could Matt’s startling post-injury recollections from the previous fall, paired four months later with his clear, organized notes from his phone call with Lisa, collide so starkly with his initial struggles to retain just four random words spoken aloud by Kathy?

I even considered deleting these conflicting elements. If I couldn’t reconcile the disparities, how could I expect anyone else to understand? That was until the underlying difference suddenly clicked.

On reflection, his earliest remembrances, his warm conversation with Lisa, and even the chapters from Harry Potter each contained something four isolated, inconsequential words did not: a storyline. They gave Matt a narrative arc—something real he could latch onto, dig his teeth into, and translate onto the page.

These are the vital pieces of the puzzle: timing, strategic integration, and the thoughtful execution of both clinical programs and home interventions—all laced with infinite patience and grueling hard work. Educating caregivers on these subtle nuances is vital; it helps assuage the deep frustration and anxiety that inevitably arise when healing doesn't align with our logical expectations.

© 2026, Sarah Watkins