On Sept. 24, 2017, Stephen Camp of Indianapolis was riding his motorcycle on the eastside of town when he was involved in an crash. He was not wearing a helmet.
Camp was rushed to Eskenazi Health where he was immediately placed into a medically-induced coma for the first of two surgeries on his head.
“I came down with three cases of pneumonia during the medically-induced coma,” Camp said. “To balance the treatment of the pneumonia with other medicines became like a giant puzzle that they put together and I really don’t know much more than that.”
After emerging from the coma, Camp went through a period of time where he couldn’t properly express himself as he was accustomed to.
“I feel better now. I can go out and walk around, but I can’t drive until November because I’ve had a couple of seizures, but I’m on (an anti-seizure medication), and that’s 99 percent sure to cover any issues,” he said.
Prior to the crash, Camp was an electrician with Maxwell Electric and attended classes at an electrician trade school. As a result of the wreck, his career as an electrician has been put on hold because he can’t climb ladders or perform other similar functions necessary to the profession. He says that physically he’s doing well, but his cognitively and short-term memory is still not where it should be.
“So right now I’m working at a restaurant at 62nd and College in a kitchen doing real simple jobs and just trying to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach,” he said. “The only way I get there, unless it’s raining, is I ride my bicycle up the Monon Trail … with a helmet this time.
“It sounds crazy, but (the crash) is the best thing that’s happened to me. It got my focus back on the right track and brought me back in the church.”
Camp is not letting this setback get in the way of goals he wants to accomplish, which include continuing his career as an electrician and becoming a motivational speaker.
“I want to write a book about this experience,” Camp said. “Only for the sake of this wreck taught me 1,001 lessons about life and I want to share the lessons I learned with other people who are going through things no matter how big or small it is.”
Camp is grateful to all the doctors, nurses and everyone else at Eskenazi Health who helped him recover from his crash.
“After the two surgeries and during recovery, I went to speech therapy at Eskenazi, where Kimberly Kirk (Eskenazi Health speech therapist) was fantastic. She helped me out with the cognitive processing of things with a lot of puzzles and she said that I graduated out of that, but if anything happens therapy is always available, which is fantastic.
“Literally everyone I’ve come in contact with at Eskenazi Health has been incredible. Everyone was patient with my family and friends coming to see me. All the doctors have been great and everyone has been incredibly caring and patient. I can tell that their heart is on the well-being of their patients across the board.”