Doctors gave Dave Irwin an 11% chance of survival, but he beat those odds and wants to help others avoid a similar accident, writes Jesse McLean, The Ottawa Citizen, Published: Tuesday, October 07, 2008

As a member of the legendary Crazy Canucks, skier Dave Irwin was known as a daredevil.

He was also known for taking nasty spills. He had a broken back. A shattered knee cap. A multitude of sprains. Two severe concussions. He always bounced back.

“There were a lot of bad ones, but I would just get better and get back on my skis, no problem,” said the 54-year-old from his home in Alberta.

But a crash on March 21, 2001, changed everything.

He was in Sunshine Village, Banff, training for an extreme skiers event. He carved down the mountain at about 40 km/h — a snail’s pace for a racer accustomed to travelling 145 km/h in the World Cup circuit. But as Mr. Irwin’s father would say, it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going, only how fast you stop.

And Mr. Irwin stopped hard. He misjudged a bump and his knee shot up, smashing into his head. His brain crashed against his skull, bruising its soft tissue and shearing off millions of nerve connectors. He suffered a diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury and was classified as a “three” on the Glasgow Come Scale, a test that measures responsiveness to pain. Mr. Irwin didn’t respond to anything.

Emergency crews airlifted him to Calgary, where he was put on life support. Doctors told his family he had only an 11-per-cent chance of survival — and an even smaller chance of being able to walk or talk again.

“I was supposed to be dead, but it didn’t quite work as they said it would,” said Mr. Irwin, who will address a fundraising dinner Thursday for the Brain Injury Association of the Ottawa Valley.

He spent the next three months in hospital undergoing intensive rehabilitation. Like many of the 50,000 people in Ottawa estimated to be living with brain injury, Mr. Irwin had to start with the basics — relearning to speak, to dress himself. The recovery continues.

“He’s always getting better. I notice things day to day, week to week,” said his partner, Lynne Harrison.

Mr. Irwin first stepped onto skis when he was 18 months old. By the time he was six, he was competing. As a teen in the early ’70s, he was becoming a name in international downhill circuits.

Then came the first head injury. Weeks before the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics, he had a bad wipeout. He still competed and placed eighth. Four years later, he crashed again. A team doctor told him to sit out the race; he raced anyway and came 11th.

“Concussions are cumulative. The first one might seem like nothing. The second will shake you some more. And the third, no worse of a hit than the first, could kill you,” said John Kumpf of the Ontario Alliance for Action on Brain Injury.

After his injury in 2001, Mr. Irwin fell into a coma. Doctors told his family they would give him six weeks to show signs of recovering. Then they would consider ending life support.

On his fourth day in the intensive care ward, he opened his eyes. His face was still blank, emotionless, but he was trying to communicate.

“He was trying to reconnect his body to his mind,” Ms. Harrison said.

It was a slow reconnection. Ms. Harrison visited him daily, help him put on his running shoes and guide him to step, as a puppeteer does with a marionette. Eventually, he could take a few steps on his own.

To help him regain his speech, she spent hours reading him children’s books and flashcards in the hope that something would trigger his lost vocabulary. About three weeks after the crash, he spoke.

“A speech language coach was with him, and he started to count in German,” she said. “He had picked it up when he trained in Austria. And for whatever reason, that’s what he first remembered. It was a pretty good laugh for the rest of us.”

Three months after the crash, Mr. Irwin returned home. The amnesia persisted. He would struggled with loved ones’ names. Some nights he would wake up and think he was in a hotel room or the wrong house.

“You could tell it frustrated him, but he always tried to be patient and gracious,” Ms. Harrison said.

He found solace in his first love: sports. The couple went on hikes and bike rides through rolling hills in Canmore, Alta. And he returned to the ski hill. One of his first runs was in March 2002, on the same hill where he had crashed.

He also began recording the things he did — where he went, who he spoke with at the café — so he could remember what happened the next day.

“The old days, I knew everything, bam, bam, bam. This, that, no problem. But I don’t do that anymore,” he said.

He’s matter-of-fact about his condition. He doesn’t remember the crash, or much of the last seven years. He speaks slowly, and is overwhelmed if two people talk at once. Still, he sounds confident. He sounds like a man content with his life.

In 2002, Mr. Irwin and Ms. Harrison started the Dave Irwin Foundation for Brain Injury to raise money for research, and even more important, to build awareness of head injuries. He tours as a speaker, and frequently stops people on the ski hill to remind them to wear a helmet.

“I’m still recovering. I will be recovering for a long time. … I want to make sure no one else has this kind of accident again,” he said.

The Brain Injury Association of the Ottawa Valley fundraiser is Oct. 9 at the Sala San Marco Banquet Hall; $100 a person. For details, call 613-728-8057.