Booneville Man, His Family Appreciate Much This Holiday Season

Speech-language therapist Brigitta Walker, right, works with Miles weekly to strengthen his speaking and swallowing abilities.
(Submitted photo)

TUPELO, Miss. (Press Release) — Kevin Miles of Booneville has had quite a year. Things went from normal to devastating in an instant and now, thankfully, to a new kind of normal.

On Jan. 25, Miles had just replaced the carburetor on his son’s four-wheeler and was testing it out on the paved road by his house. “I swerved to miss our dogs and the four-wheeler started flipping,” said the 36-year-old father of three. “Or that’s what people tell me happened. I don’t remember anything from two weeks before the accident until sometime this summer.”

The CareFlight medical helicopter crew flew Miles from the scene to North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, where he underwent multiple surgeries. While he suffered few wounds and only one broken bone (his collarbone), he had a traumatic brain injury because he was riding without a helmet.

“I’ve wished 100 times over I would have had on a helmet,” he said. “I tell my kids now, I don’t care if you are just riding by the house, you put on a helmet.”

Miles spent four months in an induced coma while his brain healed. “We went through about nine critical episodes where we almost lost him each time,” said his father, Curtis Miles Sr., also of Booneville. “It has been a long, hard struggle. It’s bad to see your child laying there completely helpless.”

His son had been a strapping young man who managed several rental properties and had just launched his own heating and air conditioning business. The accident brought all of that activity to a screeching halt.

“I lost my voice and my ability to swallow, and I was blind in one eye,” he said. He received all his nourishment through a feeding tube, and he battled infections and seizures.

“The first time I saw Kevin, he was non-verbal, unable to move much, and the only way he communicated with me was through blinking his eyes,” said Aurora Wong, M.D., a physical medicine and rehabilitation physician on NMMC’s medical staff.

When he was strong enough to be transferred to NMMC’s Rehabilitation Institute, he worked extremely hard every day with physical, occupational and speech-language therapists.

“When I first got to Rehab, I was in a wheelchair. It took three people to get me moving—two to hold me up and someone behind me pushing my legs to walk,” he said. “I could only walk about 10 feet at a time, then I’d have to sit down and rest. Then I could get up and go 10 more feet, then rest again.”

“I really expected him to go to a nursing home from the hospital,” Dr. Wong said. “Some people just get really depressed and just give up. But all of our staff believed in him. We worked diligently to improve him medically, physically and mentally.”

Coming back from such a devastating injury is slow going. “Our average length of stay in the Rehabilitation Institute is about two weeks,” Dr. Wong said. “But he just kept getting better. We knew he had it in him and kept going. It paid off.” True to his personality, Miles left NMMC shooting a water gun at the staff on his way out.

Everyone predicted at least a year to pass before Miles would be walking on his own, but he was determined to prove them wrong. He and his full-time caregiver, JoLeena Nance, practice walking around his property and around nearby Bay Springs Lake. By fall he was walking, or “hobbling” as he calls it, without help.

“Until this, I was healthy as a horse and not scared of anybody or anything,” he said. “I’m hard on myself because I feel like now I’m a puny thing. But I know I’m blessed to be here, and I have to thank the Lord every day for that.”

Miles may feel puny because he went from working out “all the time” to being unable to do anything for himself, but his physicians and therapists say he’s anything but.

After eye surgery, his vision slowly returned. And thanks to his diligent work with speech therapist Brigitta Walker at NMMC’s Outpatient Rehabilitation Center, he’s back to eating almost anything he wants. “I see Brigitta every week, and every so often I have a swallow test,” he said. “I passed off on thick liquids first, then I finally passed off on thin liquids. Not long ago she said I could have pizza, so then I started eating whatever I could so long as I take small bites. A few weeks ago I had my first Pepsi since the accident.”

This year is one the Miles family will never forget. But they also learned a steadfast truth that has seen them through the darkest of days. “The Lord answers prayers,” his father said.