Atascocita resident Jonathan Bomar doesn’t recall the course of events that left him with a broken neck and traumatic brain injury in 2016. All he can remember is driving through the rain.
Then, he woke up in the hospital. A breathing tube prevented him from talking. He couldn’t ask what happened, but his mother explained, “You’ve been in a terrible car accident.”
Bomar wasn’t able to move. “I couldn’t do anything but give a thumbs up or thumbs down,” he said.
Doctors informed him that he would never walk again.
“I was determined to prove them wrong,” Bomar said.
After leaving the hospital, he spent the following year in a wheelchair.
Then, last spring, he signed up for outpatient therapy at the TIRR Memorial Hermann rehabilitation hospital. His physical therapist Margaret McKinney remembers when he checked in for his first evaluation. She was concerned, because he had waited a year to start, past the optimum time to being rehab.
But Bomar was determined. He went from a wheelchair to a rolling walker, or rollator.
“Because of his brain injury, he had issues with dizziness and balance,” McKinney said.
Bomar remained positive as he persevered. “He comes to the workout, which is hard and also causes dizziness, always with a smile,” McKinney said. “And even if he doesn’t succeed the first time, he jumps back into it.”
Her encouragement pushed him to reach for new goals. “My therapist Margaret is the best,” Bomar said. “She hates when I say that I can’t do something, so I do that sometimes just to mess with her. She goes, ‘You can do this. I know you can, or I wouldn’t have asked you to.’”
He progressed quickly. “Jonathan was pushing me to think of what we could do better, how to pump it up to the next level,” McKinney said. “We have to reassess goals each month, but I’ve never had to rewrite goals as much as with him. Every month, we’re improving.”
But just as Bomar was nearing his goal of returning to his feet, his state-run insurance program was about to end.
“At that point, he 100 percent, needed his walker,” McKinney said. “He wasn’t safe without it. I didn’t want Jonathan to not get where he could be, because he didn’t have access to health care.”
But McKinney knew of a way to continue. Kelubia Mabatah offered a scholarship through his nonprofit, Kel Strong Mabatah Foundation, which seeks to provide a better future for TBI patients.
Mabatah, a Sugar Land resident, had his own injury six years ago. After graduating from Texas Christian University, he started working for his father’s company, which brought him back and forth to Nigeria. He was in Nigeria for about a week, when a group of men broke down his door. One was holding a gun.
Another spoke, “You know you’re going to die tonight.”
Mabatah put his hands up, and they asked where he kept money. He told them he didn’t have much, but he could get some. They told him to get down on his hands and knees.
“That let me know they didn’t come for money,” Mabatah said. “They came for my life. For what reason, it’s still a mystery to this day.”
He blacked out. The next thing he remembered was hearing noises. “It was the police,” he said. “I realized I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move my right side. They had to pick me up and put me in the truck.”
Mabatah’s brutal attack left him with a fractured skull, several stab wounds in the stomach and a number of teeth knocked out. He spent six days in a coma.
Mabatah had emergency brain surgery in Nigeria before returning to the U.S. for three more. “I was completely paralyzed, and I couldn’t talk,” he recalled.
He started at TIRR Memorial Hermann in June 2015.
“It was there, I learned to walk again,” he said. “I learned to speak. I learned how to do everything, and I’m still working on it.”
While Mabatah is still in pain daily, he is grateful to be walking. In 2019, he started his foundation, and currently provides one scholarship a year with hopes to increase the number in the future.
He wanted to help others gain access to the services provided at TIRR. “I know how important therapy is, having that support,” he said. “I wanted to give back to people who were willing to do the work and who were dedicated to recovery, but just needed extra assistance.”
Mabatah built a committee at TIRR to help him identify candidates for the award.
“It was important for me that they found someone with similar values — hard work and determination,” he said. “Jonathan fit that.”
Bomar applied and was approved for the grant. It provided him with 12 sessions at TIRR, until new insurance kicked in.
“During that time, he went from a walker to no walker,” McKinney said. “It really was a huge blessing.”
“Now I’m walking without anything,” Bomar said.
It’s been 124 therapy sessions and about four years since Bomar’s accident. He credits Mabatah for his success this summer. “I’m still constantly thanking him,” Bomar said.
Currently, Bomar walks a couple of miles a week and is working on his balance. He wants to go back to being a mechanic, his job before the accident. McKinney has been asking him to lift heavier objects, trying to simulate what he would do at work.
“If folks have the desire, and they have access to therapy, they can really make a big change,” McKinney said. “He’s a testament to that. He put in a lot of work.”
Now, she said Bomar is an inspiration to others in therapy, just as Mabatah remains one to him.
“TBI is not for a couple of years,” Bomar said. “It’s for life. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m going to talk like this, walk like this, for life.”
For him, his effort isn’t an option.
“Never give up,” he said. “When you give up on yourself, other people will give up on you.”
Mabatah has found purpose in his foundation with helping others like Bomar. He also found support from his former high school Kinkaid, which named their tennis courts after him.
“I want people to know that anything is possible,” he said. “But you have to put in the effort and the work. It really doesn’t matter what situation, challenges or disabilities you have. You can still do things that you want to do. You might just have to adapt and do things differently.”
Lindsay Peyton is a Houston-based freelance writer.
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