After a devastating motorcycle accident, Bradley Green says the caregivers at MetroHealth ensured his recovery was not only tolerable but hopeful.
“They all helped make a terrible experience not only tolerable, but encouraging and hopeful.”
Brad Green has always been an active person. At Garfield Heights High School, he was a two-sport athlete (football and basketball). At Bowling Green State University, Brad participated in intramural sports. Until his mid-30s, he played organized flag football. The self-described “adventure thrill seeker” enjoyed snowboarding and surfing on Lake Erie.
During the summer of 2020, Brad, then 37, enjoyed the beautiful weather spending time with friends on a boat he and his wife, Sara Rouse, owned. The couple and their blended family – kids Charley (16), Ava (12) and Declan (8) – went on hikes together.
On July 31, 2020, Brad was busy rearranging his garage – stacking tires and organizing his children’s toys – when his friend Doug called and convinced him to join him on a motorcycle ride. The men ended up meeting with a couple of others, riding from Broadview Heights to a restaurant in Strongsville for dinner.
Just as they had done on the way, the men decided to take the back roads home. It was getting dark, close to 9 p.m., and they wanted to avoid heavy traffic. By the time they reached downtown Hinckley, only Brad and Doug remained. They were traveling at around 45 mph, silently communicating with each other along the way.
Suddenly, Brad saw a set of headlights rapidly approaching. They were coming so fast that he had no time to react – no swerving, no hitting the brakes.
The impact of contact with a Ford F-150 truck threw Brad to the side of the road. The femur bone in his right leg had pierced through his jeans. He was conscious but feeling no pain. His body was in shock. He asked Doug whether his motorcycle was damaged. He had been wearing a helmet.
Paramedics arrived and initially transported Brad to a hospital in Brunswick, where he was stabilized before Metro Life Flight flew him to MetroHealth Medical Center, Northeast Ohio’s leading Level 1 Adult Trauma Center. It would be his first time as a patient there.
Brad sustained multiple fractures to his pelvis, femur and hip socket; knee ligament tears; a liver laceration and hand injuries.
The next day, MetroHealth orthopedic surgeon Nicholas Romeo, DO, realigned and fixed the femur with a rod, then reduced the hip socket with plates and screws.“We know that fractures will heal, but they cause dysfunction,” Dr. Romeo said. “Honestly, I was most concerned about the knee ligament injury.”
After the seven-hour surgery, Brad spent two weeks in the hospital.
Six weeks after the accident, Brad met Laurel Beverley, MD, an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in arthroscopy and sports medicine. He was mostly in a wheelchair, living in his mother’s ranch house. To allow his injuries to heal, he wore braces on both knees.
Dr. Beverley hoped regular physical therapy sessions would strengthen Brad’s knees enough to avoid ligament reconstruction surgery.
“It’s a fantastic way to find where the deficits are and to help push you through them,” she said. “We want to maximize the body’s own internal capabilities for healing.”
Brad worked with physical therapist Andy Lumpkin at the MetroHealth Brecksville Health and Surgery Center three days a week to lessen the stiffness and improve the range of motion in his right knee.
Having already weaned himself off pain medication, Brad needed to start it again to endure therapy. He took the lowest dose, and only right before his sessions with Andy. “When we got in there, l let him crank on my knee. I’d come out of there sweating most days,” he said.
In January 2021, Dr. Beverley performed a manipulation to improve Brad’s knee range of motion, and knee arthroscopy to remove damaged cartilage and bone from the knee joint. Within hours, Brad was up walking. He was home that night.
“Brad had the advantage of being physically fit before the injury, but he also worked incredibly hard from a rehab perspective,” Dr. Romeo said.
The progress Brad made helped him avoid more surgery. A few weeks later. Dr. Beverley cleared Brad to resume physical therapy.
Brad continued working with physical therapist Andy Lumpkin through September 2021. His strength and range of motion improved to the point that he began surfing a couple times that summer. In 2022 he surfed even more, but when he started to notice an “awkward” feeling in his hips, he made an appointment with Dr. Laurel Beverley toward the end of the summer.
Dr. Beverley, who last saw him early in the spring, said she couldn’t believe he had been surfing. “It’s not something we predicted that he would get back to,” she said. “With the type of injuries he sustained, you hope that a patient can walk without having to take an inflammatory.”
Apart from some hip stiffness, Brad was OK.
Brad is back at the gym, exercising at pre-accident levels – squatting 225 lbs. and deadlifting 225 lbs. – as part of ongoing strength training for his legs and the muscles that support his knee and hip.
He also coaches his son’s basketball team and his daughter’s soccer team.
A hip replacement might be needed in the future if Brad develops arthritis, Dr. Nicholas Romeo said. “We hope he doesn’t need it. He has had an excellent recovery.”
Earlier this year, for the first time in four years, Brad got on the slopes for snowboarding lessons with his son. “It’s absolutely rewarding to share that experience with him,” he said.
Brad says he’s grateful for all the nurses and doctors he encountered during his stay in the MetroHealth Trauma ICU and Trauma Unit and in the months that followed, and the rapport he built with Andy over a long year of physical therapy.
“They all helped make a terrible experience not only tolerable but encouraging and hopeful.”
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