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Newsflash Archives > Top Ten People of 2007 - #4 Brian Boyle
Top Ten People of 2007 - #4
Inside the Vatican has again chosen 10 men and women as its "Top Ten People of the Year." Profiles of each of the 10 will be published in the upcoming January issue of Inside the Vatican. Meanwhile, we will publish the profiles day by day in these email newsflashes, and on our Web site.
#1 - Francis Beckwith
#2 - Immacolata Solaro del Borgo
#3 - Sir Martin Gilbert
#4 - Brian Boyle
By Brian Boyle
My name is Brian Boyle. I am 21 years old, and I live in Maryland in the United States. I am a Catholic, a collegiate swimmer and an Ironman triathlete.
A month after I graduated from high school in 2004, I was coming home from swim practice and was involved in a nearfatal car accident with a dump truck. The impact of the crash violently ripped my heart across my chest and shattered my ribs, clavicle, and pelvis. My lungs collapsed. My kidneys and liver failed. I lost my spleen and gallbladder, and 60% of my blood.
I slipped into a coma and was on life support for more than two months at Prince George’s Hospital Center in Cheverly, Maryland. The first thing that I remember after the collision -- and this is still vivid in my mind even today, three years later -- is being in what seemed like a large white tube. In this tube was a boy sitting to my left, and many other boys and girls on my right side (I use the term "boys and girls" because they appeared to be my age). The more I sat there, the more I was able to visualize my surroundings. The boy to my left had a cell phone, and he asked me if I needed him to call anyone for me. I told him, "Yes, can you call my parents and tell them that I love them."
The next thing that I remember is waking up in a hospital bed, chemically paralyzed and hooked up to all these machines. Through all the buzzes and beeps going off from the medical equipment that was saving my life, I could hear my mom and dad telling me, in between dramatic pauses of crying hysterically, that I was going to be okay. Only moments before I believe I was waiting in line to meet my final judgment, but it must have not been my time.
This was just the beginning of my suffering. I died clinically, they tell me, eight times while I was in the intensive care unit. Then, when I woke up from my coma, I couldn’t talk or communicate. As far as my future, it didn’t exist. Walking was never going to happen again due to all the extreme injuries and because of the shattered pelvis. The thought of swimming was just that, only a thought. Just like my body, my dreams were shattered.
After spending two months in a coma, after 14 operations, 36 blood transfusions, and 13 plasma treatments, I had lost a total of 100 pounds and had to go to a rehabilitation center in Baltimore. There, I had to learn again how to talk, eat, walk, shower, and live independently. After spending a few months in a wheelchair, I took baby steps to walk on my own. It was a miracle that I could walk again, but I wanted to prove the doctors wrong and not only walk, but run. And I accomplished that.
After a few lung tests, I was able to go in the pool a little bit each week. Before the accident I had three goals: to go to college, to swim on the team, and to compete in an Ironman triathlon one day. After a few months of swimming a few laps here and there with my training partner and good buddy, Sam Fleming, I decided that I was not going to let my injuries stop me from living my dream, and six months later I began my freshman year at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and also was one of the swimmers to watch on the team.
It’s very easy to go through and list these facts and make it look like everything just seemed to easily fall in its own perfect little place, but the truth is that it didn’t. It wasn’t easy, not then, and not now. The pain and the agony was real and it existed all the way through, in the good times and the very bad. It was not an easy situation to be in, lying in a bed, staring at the ceiling, knowing that your life is over while you’re looking at a priest giving you the last rites. I thought to myself over and over, "Why did this happen to me?" I was always a good kid, received good grades in school, and went to church. Why would something as horrific as this happen to me? Why would God allow it? I went on and on for days asking, "Why?" And, then it hit me. All that thinking and pondering stirred up another question: "Why was I saved?" I didn’t have any more questions after that. I finally knew what my purpose in life was.
I am just trying to live each day to the fullest and motivate and hopefully inspire other people, in their lives and in the faith. I have been labeled on several occasions "Lazarus-like" because God brought me back to life. To inspire even more, I successfully completed the Steelhead 70.3 Half-ironman Race in Michigan a few months ago, and was given the inspirational athlete media slot to compete in the 2007 Ford Ironman World Championship, where my story was broadcast in the Ironman Show premiere as the main feature on NBC on December 1.
My story is about recovery and comeback, but I want to make it much more than that. I want to make a positive impact on the world. Hopefully, I can inspire other people through my endeavors to never give up on their dreams, and to never stop believing in their faith in God no matter how bad a situation is, because everything happens for a reason.
I believe that my purpose in life is to bring hope to those who need it most and through my past accomplishments, I have been able to have the positive mindset to keep pushing through all these obstacles.
"Through God, all things are possible": that statement is the story of my life. On October 13th, 2007, when I crossed the finish line, I proved that anything really is possible and that miracles happen to those who believe. They said that I was in God’s hands, because I was; I am living proof that miracles do happen. My name is Brian Boyle and this is my story. (Email:
bjboyle@smcm.edu. Website: www.Team-Boyle.com)
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Inside The Vatican (ISSN 1068-8579) is a Catholic news magazine, published monthly except July
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