Ninth graders at the Massapequa High School Ames Campus heard a powerful story for Brain Injury Awareness Month, reminding them to be responsible for their personal safety. Alexandra Passante, a first-year kindergarten support specialist at East Lake Elementary School, visited health education classes on March 31 and April 1 to talk about her accident and decade-long path to recovery.
Ms. Passante was a recent high school graduate in August 2016 when she was driving her open-roof Jeep Wrangler. She was cut off, hit a guardrail and ejected from the car, landing 400 feet away. Rushed to the hospital, she had emergency brain surgery in which the left side of her skull was removed until a second brain surgery months later. After awakening from a nine-day coma, she began a long process to relearn how to walk, talk and move muscles.
At 18, Ms. Passante explained, she was an infant in an adult’s body, learning the colors and how to hold a pencil. Many of her childhood memories were gone. While she may still have been hurt in the accident, a major brain injury would have been avoided had she simply worn her seatbelt.
“Most stories like this, people don’t survive,” Ms. Passante said, noting that she beat the odds. “Most people who do survive a traumatic brain injury can’t walk or talk.”
Her story of survival and rehabilitation, she explained, put her on a mission to share her story with others and remind people that life can change in an instant from a bad decision. She encouraged students to talk basic steps to protect their own safety by wearing a seatbelt in the car or looking both ways when crossing the street.
Health education chairperson Denise Baldinger noted that March is Brain Injury Awareness Month and the ninth grade health curriculum also includes a unit on decision-making. In addition to speaking to health classes, Ms. Passante also talked to students at the high school’s main campus during awareness week.