A month after his graduation, Charlie Maddock '04 was hit by a car and suffered an often-fatal traumatic brain injury. Two years later, in 2006, he founded the Charles Maddock Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that supports patients who have suffered brain trauma.
Maddock was crossing the street in New York City when he was hit by a taxi cab and crashed through its windshield. He received several severe physical injuries, including a fractured jaw and shattered pelvis. The most critical injury, however, was the trauma to his brain, which swelled due to the impact of hitting the cab.
Maddock was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he underwent surgery to reduce the intracranial pressure in his skull.
According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, approximately 1.4 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, in the United States annually. Of that number, 50,000 die. Other long-term effects of TBI can include epilepsy and a greater risk of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases.
"I was one of the lucky ones," Maddock told The Herald.
After leaving the hospital, Maddock still had the difficult task of rehabilitating from the physical and emotional pain of his TBI. The affliction is often called an "invisible epidemic," Maddock said, because people who survive a TBI are forever changed. Maddock said he does not remember anything from the weeks after the accident.
Jonathan Meachin '04, treasurer of the Charles Maddock Foundation and Maddock's friend, said, "One thing I didn't understand at all was this lack of memory from the first six weeks afterward. ... It's funny from the exterior - everything was amazingly the same, but it was a certain lack of patience and ... a shorter temper that was there."
"More than anything else, I was extremely nervous, extremely embarrassed," Maddock said. "Every time I had to get out of bed, I had to put a helmet on because I only had half a skull."
Maddock remembers the frustration of watching his friends start their post-graduation lives. "It took a long, long time. I was able to start work about seven-and-a-half months after my accident."
In January 2006, Maddock began to work closely with Dr. Howard Riina, his doctor from New York Presbyterian Hospital, with the goal to help people who suffer from TBI - a goal that is being fulfilled by his foundation. "The guy who literally saved my life is now a close friend and works with me in this organization," Maddock said.
Meachin said the leaders of the foundation are working to recruit world-class doctors and strong team members. The long-term goals of the foundation include educating physicians on TBIs, raising funds for medical research to improve treatment and providing resources for those who have suffered a TBI.
"The reason I wanted to do something, throughout my inpatient and outpatient rehab - it was reiterated to me constantly that had my accident occurred in some other place, had I been seen by less-educated physicians, I might not be here, and I certainly wouldn't be the same person I was before my accident," Maddock said.
TBI has recently received national media due to the increasing amount of head injuries for soldiers stationed in Iraq. About 10 to 20 percent of the 35,000 screened "health returnees" from Iraq and Afghanistan had "experienced a mild TBI during deployment," the New York Times reported in July.
President Bush is seeking to improve military health treatment, including focusing additional attention to brain trauma caused by roadside bombs. The cost of implementing all the recommendations of a presidential panel on military and veterans health care would begin at $500 million a year currently and would jump to $100 billion annually once veterans aged. The new programs would also assign a coordinator to each patient and family to guide them through their recovery process.
TBI has also made the national news because of the large number of NFL players with head trauma. In June 2007, late Pittsburgh Steelers offensive lineman Justin Strzelczyk was found to have signs of a condition associated with the elderly or boxers with dementia. Strzelczyk is the fourth NFL player to be found with this condition, which is thought to be caused by repeated concussions on the football field.
As of August 2007, the NFL has created new regulations that prohibit teams from returning players who have suffered an injury that resulted in the loss of consciousness to games or practices.
"In terms of things that younger students should be aware of is that it causes so much death," Maddock said.
Maddock and Meachin encourage Brown graduates who plan to live in New York City to become involved in the foundation. "One of the great things about the organization is that so many younger people bring their ideas and skills to help Jon and I build this," Maddock said. "I think people have been really happy that their involvement with CMF has really had a reasonable affect."
In addition to starting the foundation, Maddock has worked for three years at Fidelity Investments. He plans to apply to business school in the future and will continue his work with the foundation. "There's no way I would've spent so much time and dedicated myself so much outside of work, as cheesy as it sounds, to try to make the world a better place," Maddock said.
The one thing that's special about this foundation is that it is founded and run by someone who survived, Meachin said. "It's that much more phenomenal that Charlie is still here with us."
