By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
The scars on his skull are still clearly visible. But if Dan Mollino’s traumatic brain injury of five years ago left scars on the inside, you’d never know it.
“This ride is really me fighting to keep getting closer to what I was before the injury,” he said.
The former cable line worker is setting off on a solo, cross-country bike tour. From the Kessler Foundation in West Orange — where he received most of his treatment — to San Francisco. Along the way he’ll raise awareness, support and funds for TBI survivors like himself.
“I apparently fell from a telephone poll. I don’t remember anything of that moment. That whole time got wiped. When I came out of the coma I was unable to speak, had the trachea tube and all that,” he said.
“When he first came in he was missing half of his skull from the craniectomy surgery that he had. He wasn’t speaking much, he had weakness and balance issues as well. And he’s come a long way,” said Kessler Brain Injury Rehabilitation Director Dr. Neil Jasey.
It took two years before Dan could get enough balance just to sit on his bike again, and three more to get to this point.
When asked what it was like the first time he got back on the bike, he said, “It was rough. It turned into an escape. All the pain, all the issues that I have from the injury, they seem to fade away when I’m on the bike. It created a place of bliss.”
It’s a new normal for Dan and his wife. Their roles have reversed in the house to help him better cope with the lingering symptoms, like extreme fatigue. Many are invisible to the naked eye.
“You have word finding issues, memory is horrible. I’m pretty sure I keep post-it notes in business at this point in time and depending on the weather, the days can get really, really bad. Every time we go from winter to summer I have to get the shunt in my head adjusted because the pain is just, you’re laid up,” he said.
“Dan has done incredible and that’s a tribute to his physicians, but more to him and his spirit and his stick-to-it-ness, perseverance, he has this incredible motivation,” said Dr. Nancy Chiaravalloti, Director of the Traumatic Brain Injury Research at Keller Foundation Research Center.
“You never really know where someone is going to end up when you first meet them and I think his journey is still continuing and he’ll continue to improve and get better but certainly to reach this level is pretty spectacular,” said Dr. Jasey.
When asked if that speaks to how much we still don’t know about how the brain heals, Dr. Jasey said, “It does. You know there’s a tremendous amount we don’t know. We certainly don’t know more than we know.”
The first leg of Dan’s trip will bring him to Easton, Pa. From there he doesn’t have a set timeline, but expects to end up in California sometime in June. A ride like this is both mentally and physically exhausting, but after the last five years, it’s nothing Dan hasn’t already overcome.