California woman set to cycle across the country after traumatic brain injury

Sunday, Could 15 2022
Countrywide Desk

The mountain roadways all over Donner Lake in California are home to Whitney Hardy. The twists and turns of the roadways, nonetheless lined with spring snow, are her go-to cycling places. The sloping downgrades and challenging inclines of Donner Pass Highway are now a teaching floor for the journey of her everyday living.

“It truly is difficult and I’m someone who’s tremendous determined and motivated by, like, ‘I dare you,'” Hardy mentioned.

Daring. Daring. Courageous.

Adjectives you should not scratch the surface of what the Truckee, California, girl is about to just take on.

She’s about to embark on a 4,300-mile, cross-nation bicycle journey – from the Oregon coastline to Boston – 8 decades immediately after a awful crash remaining her with a traumatic mind injury.

Hardy will sign up for the “Stroke Throughout America” ride together with longtime loved ones pals/group organizer and stroke consciousness advocates, Steve Zuckerman and Debra Meyerson.

Hardy ‘s mission, as part of the team biking throughout the U.S., is to glow a gentle on traumatic mind harm survivors and press herself cognitively and emotionally, according to the Stroke Onward business.

Cycling across the place 8 to 10 several hours a day averaging 50 miles a working day is an extraordinary feat for any human.

It is a virtually unfathomable triumph over tragedy when you factor in Hardy’s journey to the beginning line.

“When the auto strike me my head strike the ground so really hard that it was just like, growth!” Hardy explained about the night time back in 2014 when she was strike by a car while on an just after-operate run. “My injury was exceptionally traumatic.”

Dwelling in Boston at the time, medical doctors considered her injuries existence-threatening and gave her a slim prospect at survival.

“I do not keep in mind it occurring. I never remember waking up in the hospital,” Hardy mentioned. “I don’t try to remember, the initially time that I don’t forget, after the injuries.”

In the months adhering to the crash, there would be a collection of surgical procedures, recovery, and bodily rehabilitation for the previous school athlete.

Her battle for survival was tough-fought.

“I really don’t go backwards. I you should not imagine, ‘I wish that hardly ever took place,’ because it truly is not gonna improve anything at all,” Hardy claimed.

The lasting outcomes of the traumatic brain damage she endured, even so, remain to this day.

“I have a blind disability in which no a single can notify what my disabilities are except they get to know me truly properly,” she reported.

Tackling day-to-working day tasks in an arranged way and trouble with small-expression memory are extended-phrase troubles she manages daily.

“Don’t forget that you’re gonna forget about this,” Hardy spelled out, as she explained how she approaches her each day program now as a (traumatic brain harm) survivor. “Create it down or set it somewhere in your bodily lender, not your memory financial institution, because that does not occur anymore.”

Her prepared journey throughout the nation is all the more significant given what she’s needed to conquer.

“What I am targeted on ideal now is biking,” she mentioned. “Obtaining ready for this excursion.”

Hardy stated she’s searching ahead to seeing new sights and testing her actual physical restrictions.

“It truly is a thing I am gonna seem again on in a really extended time and be like, ‘Yeah, I did that,'” she reported.

She’s also fascinated in connecting with persons, just like her, alongside the way.

“I am variety of hopeful that I will meet up with others who have been as a result of trauma, traumatic mind damage, so sort of, produce a neighborhood of these who have experienced similarly to what I have.”

They’ll formally begin their journey to Boston in Oregon. It is set to wrap up toward the stop of August with a lot of stops for community events together the way.