Near-death ski accident as teen gives Brodie golden perspective on life

 Near-death ski accident as teen gives Brodie golden perspective on life

Belleville High School Athletic Director Joe Brodie is pictured in the high school’s athletic complex hallway on Dec. 13. The inset photo (taken by the Detroit Free Press) shows him in the U of M Hospital with his dad, Bob, in the days after his near-death ski accident. Bob Brodie’s Salem basketball team presented him with the District championship trophy it had just won.

This is the ultimate story of survival, gratefulness and perspective.

It has been written daily and eloquently by Joe Brodie, the widely-respected athletic director at Belleville High School.

The opening chapter begins Feb. 24, 1994, the day the then-13-year-old middle-schooler came within a few millimeters, doctors assert, of losing his life.

On that late-February day three decades ago, Brodie visited the Riverview Highlands Ski Resort with his younger brother Scott and a couple friends to complete the third of three ski lessons he had been gifted the previous Christmas by his parents, Bob and Pat.

While details are fuzzy as to what led to the accident, it is believed Brodie fell backward on an icy slope, knocking him temporarily unconscious while navigating a ski hill at the now-closed resort.

Devastating injury

“From what we’ve been able to piece together, when I reached the end of the hill, which was very steep at the bottom, my body slid under a snow fence, but my head was clotheslined by the fence,” Brodie recounted last week from his office adjacent to the Belleville High School gymnasium.

Brodie had suffered an atlanto-occipital dislocation, in which the skull becomes separated from the spine, stretching the brainstem to its limits.

Joe and Bob Brodie are framed by the Class A District basketball trophy the Salem team coached by Bob Brodie earned days earlier.
Joe and Bob Brodie are framed by the Class A District basketball trophy the Salem team coached by Bob Brodie earned days earlier

“At the time of my accident, we learned that only 40 people in the world had ever survived with injuries similar to the ones I had incurred,” Brodie said.

“The majority of people who suffer an injury like this die instantly,” Dr. Stephen Papadopoulus, the neurosurgeon who operated on Brodie, told the University of Michigan Medical Center’s magazine The Advance in 1994.

The vast majority who are fortunate enough to survive atlanto-occipital dislocation are usually paralyzed from the neck down for the remainder of their lives, the doctor added.

Heroes in action

After being aided by members of the facility’s ski patrol, Brodie was transported by first-responders to Trenton’s Riverside Hospital.

“I don’t remember anything that happened right before the accident, except that conditions weren’t ideal for skiing,” Brodie said. “I was kind of in a dream-like state right after. I remember waking up and seeing people looking down at me. Everything was fuzzy.”

Once doctors at Riverside determined Brodie’s injuries were too severe for them to treat, he was airlifted by helicopter to The University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, where he underwent a first-of-its-kind surgery at the medical center.

“When I asked the doctor how many of these surgeries he had performed, he told me, ‘None’,” recounted Joe’s dad, Bob, a longtime educator and coach at Salem High School. “He told me no one had ever survived with the injuries Joe had suffered.”

Too close for comfort

Joe had literally eluded death by mere millimeters.

U of M doctors successfully implanted a titanium rod in Brodie to stabilize the injury during a four-hour surgery. The rod will never be removed.

Dr Papadopolous explains the injury to a teenaged Joe Brodie in a photo published by the U of M Medical Center publication The Advance

During the first few days of a 45-day hospital stay, Brodie’s spirits were uplifted when his dad presented him with the MHSAA Class A District championship trophy Bob’s Salem boys basketball team (for which Joe was a ball boy) captured.

“The District tournament was just a few days after my accident,” Joe Brodie recalled. “My dad, who was at the hospital with my mom whenever he wasn’t working, told me he wasn’t going to coach the district because he wanted to be at the hospital with me. I told him, ‘Go coach!'”

“The players dedicated the tournament to Joe,” Bob said.

The next step was a relentless rehabilitation journey for Brodie.

Re-learning life’s basic skills

“I had to learn to walk and talk again,” Brodie said, “so, yeah, that was tough. One of the hardest things was not being able to swallow because my nerves that affect swallowing had been damaged. I had to spit my saliva in a cup. I remember thinking, ‘Is this what I’m going to have to do the rest of my life?'”

Fueled by his dad’s all-important coaching to regain his motor skills — Joe Brodie revealed his dad would take him to Flat Rock High School’s weight room for almost-daily light workouts once he was able — and his mom’s nurturing, Brodie set off on what doctors consider a legendary rehab journey.

“The rehabilitation facility had a stair-stepper machine that Joe worked out on,” Bob Brodie said. “At first he could barely take four or five steps. They had a list taped to a mirror in front of the machine of the record number of steps patients before Joe had taken on the machine.

“The competitive athlete in Joe saw that list and he was determined to put his name on top.”

Relentless determination

Joe not only broke the previous record, he tripled it.

Unable to swallow in the weeks after the accident, Joe received nourishment through a feeding tube attached to his stomach.

“After a while, Bob deBear, who I coached basketball with, mentioned he knew of a clinic in Detroit that focused on helping patients regain the ability to swallow,” Bob Brodie said.

Joe Brodie shoots a free throw for the Flat Rock junior varsity basketball team just months after his near-fatal injury
Joe Brodie shoots a free throw for the Flat Rock junior varsity basketball team just months after his near fatal injury

During Joe’s first visit to the clinic — while following the medical staff’s advice to try eating and swallowing with his chin bent forward — Joe consumed three vanilla wafer cookies, which was one small feat for healthy people, one giant leap for Joe Brodie.

“On the way home from the clinic, I said, ‘Hey, Joe, why don’t we stop at McDonald’s and get you some real food as everything he had eaten to that point since the injury was either through the feeding tube or it had to be mushed up in a blender,” Bob recalled.

Best cheeseburger ever

Still wearing the spine-stabilizing halo, Joe ordered a McDonald’s cheeseburger.

“I had to eat really slowly, obviously, and it seems like my dad and I were sitting there three hours while I ate that cheeseburger,” Joe said, smiling.

Bob recalled a humorous moment at McDonald’s.

“Joe was wearing a Salem letter jacket and I noticed the buttons weren’t aligned,” Bob said, smiling. “I pointed this out to Joe and he said, ‘Dad, I’m wearing this giant halo on my head and I’m cross-eyed (a temporary result of the injury). Do you really think people are going to notice my buttons aren’t buttoned straight?'”

Bob Brodie smiled at the memory.

Tireless rehab

Throughout the summer of ’94, the Brodie family worked tirelessly to help Joe return to as close to his old self as possible.

Joe Brodie is pictured with his wife Jody and sons Adam and Brayden
Joe Brodie is pictured with his wife Jody and sons Adam and Brayden

A three-sport athlete pre-injury, Joe contemplated serving as the kicker for Flat Rock High School’s junior-varsity football team that fall.

“But then I realized if there was a bad snap or something and I had to pick up the ball and run with it, there would be contact, which would have been bad,” Joe said. “So I gave up that idea.”

Brodie did return to playing basketball and baseball at Flat Rock High School, although he still couldn’t turn his neck nearly as far as he could pre-injury.

They meet again

A few years ago, Brodie visited Dr. Papadopolous, who had moved his practice to Phoenix, AZ, where Joe’s grandparents lived.

“He’s worked with so many patients, I wasn’t sure he’d remember me, but he said he did,” Joe said. “Along with my parents, he’s one of my biggest heroes.

“It would be impossible for me to ever repay them for what they did for me. I’ll be forever grateful.”

Following several years of teaching and coaching at the high school level, Brodie was hired as Belleville’s athletic director during the 2015-16 school year.

Thriving at life

He has excelled in the role, helping guide the Tigers’ athletic program to multiple Final Four appearances and two state football titles.

He has also thrived as a husband to wife Jody (the two met while students at Central Michigan University) and the father of two sons, Adam (a senior at Flat Rock High School) and Brayden (a freshman at Flat Rock).

“Some people I work with on a daily basis know more details of my injury  than others,” Brodie said. “Some probably aren’t aware of it at all.

“When I was teaching health, I’d use anecdotes from my recovery to help teach a lesson if it was related to what I went through.”

Take nothing for granted

Brodie said a day doesn’t go by when he doesn’t think about how fortunate he was to survive what is generally a non-survivable injury.

“Every day I reflect on it,” he said. “It definitely gave me a new perspective on life. I don’t get rattled — I try to stay even-keeled — and I don’t take things too seriously. That’s only natural, I guess, when you go skiing for fun one day and almost lose your life.”

What advice would Brodie give someone in the recovery phase of a daunting health crisis?

“I would tell them you just have to keep fighting,” he said. “I’m proof that if you work hard and are surrounded by the right people, your body can recover in amazing ways.

“Don’t ever give up on it. And you have to work to help the process along.”

Ed Wright can be reached at 734-664-4657 or edwright@socialhousenews.com.

Joe Brodie has been a successful athletic director at Belleville High School since 2016
Joe Brodie has been a successful athletic director at Belleville High School since 2016

Ed Wright

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