Accident leaves Windsor snowboarder in coma

The late-night phone call shattered the quiet calm of a Saturday evening with the news their 20-year-old son Cole Kierdorf lay comatose in Pontiac's McLaren Hospital after he suffered a severe head injury while snowboarding.

A fundraising event was held Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013, for Cole Kierdorf at the Riverside High School in Windsor, Ont. The 20-year-old Kierdorf, a Riverside grad and standout swimmer was injured recently snowboarding in Michigan. Riverside swim coach John Loncke who organized the event holds a photo of Kierdorf during the event. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

The late-night phone call shattered the quiet calm of a Saturday evening with the news their 20-year-old son Cole Kierdorf lay comatose in Pontiac’s McLaren Hospital after he suffered a severe head injury while snowboarding.

After setting down the phone from that Jan. 26 call, Marty Kierdorf and his wife Janet Fleming knew their family’s life had changed for the foreseeable future, if not forever.

“They grade the patients coming into the ER and a dead person is a three,” said Kierdorf, who was just turning in for the night with his wife when they received the call from the ski patrol at Pine Knob ski resort in Clarkston. Mich. “A healthy person, like you or I, is a 20. He came in as a four.

“They considered his injury extreme brain damage.”

Cole Kierdorf was fit, an experienced snowboarder, an OFSAA gold-medal winning swimmer and his parents knew and trusted the group of tight-knit friends from their son’s days on Riverside’s high school swim team.

“He was excited,” Marty Kierdorf said. “He’d bought a bunch of new snowboarding equipment and clothes.

Disaster struck on a run when Cole went airborne. Upon landing his knee smashed into his face, breaking the bones around his right eye and knocking him unconscious.

He hasn’t regained consciousness.

A fundraising event was held Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013, for Cole Kierdorf at the Riverside High School in Windsor, Ont. The 20-year-old Kierdorf, a Riverside grad and standout swimmer was injured recently snowboarding in Michigan. This is a family handout photo of Kierdorf. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

“The phone call was the worst point,” Kierdorf said. “It’s the biggest fear for every parent because there’s nothing you can do.”

Their world would soon shrink to McLaren’s intensive care unit and the hospital hallways where they could walk off what seemed a lifetime’s worth of stress. They wouldn’t return home for another 10 days.

“We got to see him right away and it was bad,” said Kierdorf.

Cole Kierdorf had intravenous drips in his arm, a ventilator and feeding tubes snaked down his throat. A monitoring device imbedded in his head between the skull bone and brain measured pressure from the swelling.

It wasn’t until early this week that the tide seemed to be turning in Cole’s favour.

The pressure on his brain began to ease. EEG scans showed the electrical activity in his brain was encouraging and CAT scans and X-rays confirmed the numerous small bleeds in his brain had resolved themselves.

Thursday, doctors removed the ventilator and feeding tubes and they performed a tracheotomy to aid his breathing. An external feeding tube was inserted into his stomach through his abdomen.

Survival, which seemed an unlikely miracle a little less than two weeks ago, no longer is the dominant issue.

“It’s pretty scary not knowing what’s going to happen,” said Kierdorf, who returned to his job with Williams’ Food Equipment Wednesday for the first time since the accident. “We don’t know his future.

“Everything for us is on hold. We just hope he’ll get better.”

Doctors will now slowly wean Cole Kierdorf off sedatives.

“(Tuesday) night he came out of it a bit when they eased the medications to see if he’d react,” said Marty Kierdorf. “The nurses saw his eye flutter.

“We know he can hear because he squeezes your hand and follows patterns of squeezing when you tell him to.”

Much remains unknown.

“We don’t know what Cole is going to come back to us,” Kierdorf said. “We’ve been told he could have some personality changes.”

Doctors can’t tell the family when Cole may emerge from the coma, either. It could take a week, a month or even a year.

After that, he’s facing at least a year’s worth of rehabilitation.

“Doctors have told us he probably is looking at rehab to learn how to walk and talk,” said Kierdorf, who said he isn’t sure when his son might be able to return toWindsor. “We don’t know anything for sure.

“We only know we’re looking at a long, drawn-out process.”

Kierdorf said recent tests on his son, a second-year graphic arts student at St. Clair College, hint the brain damage might not be as severe as first thought.

It’s buoyed his and his wife’s hopes that the boy they’ve always known may return to them.

“He’s a great kid,” said Kierdorf, who admitted it’s been a real struggle for Cole’s brothers. “He’s a stubborn 20-year-old. He has a real lust for life. That’s what we loved seeing in him.”

With all three of the Kierdorf boys having been or are still part of the Riverside high school swim team, the Rebel ranks have closed around them in support.

A fundraising event was held Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013, for Cole Kierdorf at the Riverside High School in Windsor, Ont. The 20-year-old Kierdorf, a Riverside grad and standout swimmer was injured recently snowboarding in Michigan. Kyle Lenarduzzi, 19, signs a banner for Kierdorf during the event. (DAN JANISSE/The Windsor Star)

Riverside swim coach Jon Loncke organized an alumni meet at the school and a post-swim gathering at Average Joe’s Thursday to raise funds for the family.

“They’ve been involved with our swim team for my 15 years as coach, so just about everyone knows them,” Loncke said. “They’ve been huge supporters of our swim team.

“I was overwhelmed at the response we got from our alumni for just throwing this together last weekend.”

The Kierdorf family, who heap praise on the care their son has received from theMcLaren Hospital staff, knows eventually they’ll face a financial challenge for becoming entangled in the American health care system.

Kierdorf said his wife has some coverage through work, but they’re unsure how exposed they’ll be financially.

Janet Fleming remains off her jobs at Lab Tech and helping with WFCU Centre’s children’s programs to be at her son’s bedside daily.

“If we go bankrupt, we go bankrupt,” Kierdorf said. “As long as we can get Cole back, we don’t care about what it costs.”

Those still wishing to make a donation can do so at Riverside Secondary School at 8465 Jerome St.

Donations should be marked attention of Jon Loncke and can be dropped off between 7:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

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