Keeping a Promise

During our interview, nineteen-year-old Joshua “Jay” Franjul tag teams with his mom, Angie, in recounting all that has happened in the last 16 months. Joshua still has memory issues — and there’s a lot to remember. On May 31, 2023, Joshua and his older brother, Mike, headed to the gym. They were both dealing with the health effects of obesity and had promised each other that they would lose weight and get stronger.

“We had had enough, and we made a promise to finally get into shape. And so, we contacted our cousin Jesus, who's a personal trainer, and got set up with a plan to finally be comfortable in our own skin,” Joshua explains.

But as the pair drove out of their neighborhood, a delivery truck ran into their car. Mike died in the crash, and Joshua sustained multiple injuries, including broken ribs, a fractured clavicle, damage to his diaphragm, and a traumatic brain injury (TBI), which affected his ability to move his left side.

Joshua spent the next three weeks at Ascension Sacred Heart Bay Hospital in Panama City. For the first two weeks, he used a ventilator to help him breathe and couldn’t offer much response to his parents or the medical staff.

Angie remembers that after the first week in the hospital, Joshua could gently squeeze her hand and give what looked like a thumbs-up. Joshua’s neurologist said they needed more of a response — something like a peace sign, he suggested. Eventually, Joshua did give them a sign — with his middle finger. It wasn’t a peace sign, but one that his mom and dad knew reflected his spit-fire personality.

With signs that Joshua might emerge from his disorder of consciousness, his parents began to consider where he should go for rehabilitation. Their options were a nearby facility or Shepherd Center.

“We had never heard of either one,” Angie recalls, “but the staff at Ascension was absolutely phenomenal, and they told us without a doubt that they would choose Shepherd — and we're so glad that we did.”

Milestones

When Joshua transferred to Shepherd on June 21, he could shake his head yes or no but still couldn’t open his eyes. He no longer needed the ventilator to breathe but still had a tracheostomy tube to help him transition to breathing independently. He was admitted to the Disorders of Consciousness Program, and his mom remembers a huge milestone Joshua reached soon after arriving.

“This kid could barely open his eyes, and within 24 hours, Shepherd had him saying ‘mom’ — and by June 24th, he was a chatterbox,” Angie recalls.

Joshua’s personality began to shine. When his cousin came to spend time with him, Joshua pulled a prank on her. He asked her to call his friend Clark. She searched his contacts on his phone, trying to find Clark’s number. He asked her again to please call his friend Clark. Clark Kent. She called Joshua’s parents, upset that she couldn’t find the number. Joshua then laughed, “Superman. Ha! Ha!”

He marked transfers in the Hoyer lift with an excited “Weeeeeeeee!”

“My nurses loved it,” Joshua recalls.

“He had everyone laughing with him,” his mom adds.

Joshua’s sense of humor — and sense of determination — helped him in his therapy sessions.

“If I couldn't do something, that just lit a fire under me. If I fell down, I wouldn't sit on the floor, I wouldn't be frustrated and give up. I would try just one more time,” he recalls.

He says the staff often had to remind him to slow down and not push TOO hard, but he appreciated how they tailored his therapy to his interests.

“They do a very good job of keeping therapy not only beneficial to you but also enjoyable,” Joshua explains. “One of my goals was to be able to play video games again, and they 100% had me playing video games frequently during therapy, which was a part of therapy that I genuinely loved because they found a way to make my work, my rehabilitation, fun for me specifically.”

While he was growing stronger, Joshua’s family stayed in Shepherd Center’s donor-funded family housing. He says having them nearby made a huge difference and that he “relied on them for the whole journey.”

Meanwhile, his family took advantage of Shepherd’s counseling and peer support program. Angie says she still takes comfort in things she learned from the peer support staff.

When Joshua graduated from the inpatient program, he continued rehabilitation at Shepherd Pathways, a comprehensive outpatient rehabilitation program for people recovering from brain injury. By the time he left Shepherd, he had regained use of his left side. He was walking and only occasionally using a wheelchair for longer distances.

Looking to the Future

Now he’s back home, and his family has recently moved from Panama City to Tampa. He left his wheelchair in the garage and hasn’t used it since. He still goes to outpatient physical and speech therapy for what he calls “fine-tuning” for specific physical skills and to work on his memory.

He’s also back at the gym. He’s lifting weights and has lost 110 pounds. Over the summer, he won second place in the transformation division of a bodybuilding competition. He’s studying to be a certified personal trainer through the National Academy of Sports Medicine.

“I just genuinely enjoy the fitness world, so I want my job to be in it. I started my fitness journey as a way to finish my promise to Mike, but then I got healthy, and I was kind of at a crossroads. Why should I continue pushing myself? And then I found the answer to that is — I want to help as many people as I possibly can. I want to help people who are, like me, lost on how to lose weight. Being in that spot, it feels like quicksand, and I want to help all those people who are in my shoes.”

Now that the family is settled in Tampa, Joshua plans to focus on school. He’d like to get a degree related to nutrition to complement his personal training certification and enhance his ability to help others. As he reflects on his time at Shepherd, he says, “They gave me my life back.”

Written by Ruth Underwood