Window Rock track athlete overcomes odds with TBI injury

GALLUP – Window Rock’s Jayden Bia celebrated his 18th birthday Saturday by competing in the Angelo DiPaolo Invitational.

The Window Rock senior ran the second leg in the 4×100 relay race as his relay team set a school record of 46.03 seconds.

The unit, which consists of Aayanma Quimayoysie, Bia, Kanaan Marianito and Tyrone Sam, broke the previous school record of 46.13 seconds that had stood since 2015.

Bia also took part in the boys long jump and javelin events with some success. He placed fourth in the long jump with a 17-feet, 4.5-inch effort and ninth in the javelin, throwing the spear 105-feet.

The gifted athlete was able to accomplish all that even though he suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) last fall when he sustained a concussion during Window Rock’s homecoming football game with the Page Sand Devils on Oct. 9 in Fort Defiance.

Bia played three quarters, leading the team with 140 yards rushing and completing 3 of 6 passes for another 19 yards and a touchdown.

As Window Rock’s main threat, Bia was bombarded the entire night as he took a lot of hits from Page.

“I was feeling good the whole way,” Bia said when asked if he had any suspicion that he needed to sit out after a hit.

After doing his part, Bia called it quits as he sat on the sideline cheering on his teammates in the final stanza on that cold Friday night. It wasn’t until the team broke its final huddle that he started feeling signs of a concussion.

“As soon as I unbuckled my shoulder pads that is when I got a really bad headache,” Bia said. “It was like a migraine, and I was like ‘Ah, man, this hurts,’ so I went to my coach.”

As soon as he reached head football coach Wilbur Begay Jr., Bia started to feel dizzy.

“I was holding onto coach because I got really weak,” the three-sport athlete said. “I closed my eyes for a couple of seconds and then I started to throw up, but nothing was coming out.”

His parents – Jason Bia and Delila Begay – were quickly summoned to take Jayden to the hospital. When his mom reached him in the locker room, he was already hunched over near the trash can.

“He was throwing up and he was sweating profusely,” Begay remembered. “He had already gone pale, so we were trying to tell him that we needed to go, but I think at that moment he was in denial, not wanting to accept how serious it was.”

Bia’s dad and Window Rock athletic trainer Muriel Tsosie lifted him up and carried him to the family’s truck so they could take him to the Tséhootsoi Medical Center down the road.

On the way to the Fort Defiance hospital, Bia’s eyes started to close, and his mom tried to keep him awake.

“At one point he wasn’t responding, and I got really frightened,” Begay said. “I was trying to wake him up and he wouldn’t wake up.”

Eventually, Bia came through and revived. At the hospital the family was placed in the waiting room until he was given a CT scan to determine the extent of his concussion.

“It was kind of disappointing because they weren’t taking it seriously,” Bia’s mother said of the hospital staff. “He was alert by this time, but after they completed the CT scan, they loaded him on a bed, and they put him in the trauma room.

“The nurses and doctors were running around and that scared me because I didn’t know what was going on,” she added. “They just told us that it was very serious, and he had to be flown out.”

The medical staff explained the situation, stating that a blood vessel in Bia’s head had burst, and that he needed advanced care as he was flown to the University of New Mexico hospital in Albuquerque.

Upon arriving, Bia was prepped for a craniotomy, a medical procedure in which a piece of his skull was removed to help relieve the pressure in his brain.

“I just remember them telling me that they were going to shave my head and that they were going to put me to sleep,” Bia said.

Dr. Peter Shin, the neurologist who performed the surgery, was stunned that Bia was able to communicate with him prior to his procedure.

“Dr. Shin told Jayden that he’s such a blessing, a miracle,” Begay said. “With what happened to him, he shouldn’t have been able to talk. There were things that Jayden did that surprised him, like being able to respond to him.

“It was as if nothing really happened to him,” she added.

Begay added that the surgeon was amazed with the extent of concussion. He was surprised that he received that type of injury from a football game.

“They had never seen a case like that before,” she said. “They normally see that type of trauma from major car accidents and, you know, people falling from high atop buildings.”

According to Begay, the blood in Bia’s head shifted his brain to the left a couple of centimeters.

“I’m just very thankful that it didn’t cause any major damage to his brain,” said Begay, who immediately started a prayer circle with family and friends.

“We said prayers over the phone just as they got him ready for surgery,” she said. “The surgery took four hours and I just kept praying continuously even though I hadn’t slept for 24 hours.”

Following the surgery, Bia was moved into the ICU ward and after gaining consciousness he had asked his family members not to cry.

“It was hard to see him lying there,” Begay said. “He was already hurting, and he didn’t want us to cry, so we had to compose ourselves together and wipe our tears away.”

It didn’t take long for Bia to recover as he was discharged the following Tuesday.

“It was kind of scary because I thought they were sending us back too soon,” Begay said. “I explained to them that we don’t have that advanced care at home like they do at the hospital, but Jayden was tired of being at the hospital.”

Admittedly, Bia said he wanted to go home and during the process of his healing he made an effort to start doing things.

“I kept telling myself that if I just sat there, I would be babying myself and that wasn’t going to help me,” he said. “I slowly started to move around, and I started to do little chores but if I got a headache, I would sit down and take a break.”

As part of his recovery in the hospital, Bia was given narcotics to help alleviate his pain from his surgery. But he didn’t want to take them as he had a fear of becoming dependent on those types of drugs.

“They gave me the highest drugs like fentanyl and hydrocodone,” Bia said. “I didn’t like it and I was scared to take them.”

“He was in pain, and it was hard to see him uncomfortable,” his mom added. “He didn’t want them because he was aware of what narcotics can do to a person, but we had to talk him into it because he just had a big surgery.”

Bia thinks that he was given those pain medications at least two times during his four-day stay.

And although he has no lingering effects from his ordeal, Bia still has nightmares of what happened. He’s also developed a phobia – trypanophobia.

“Right now, I’m paranoid with needles,” Bia said. “Before that I was OK with it. When I was in the hospital, they (injected) me with a lot of needles.”

A few weeks after his surgery, the Window Rock senior decided that he wanted to go back to school. And although his mom thought it was too early, the pair met with teachers, counselors and his principal to put together a Section 504 Accommodation Plan for him.

According to the Arizona Department of Education, a 504 Accommodation Plan requires all stakeholders to guarantee that a student with a disability is given the necessary assistance and accommodations for them to succeed.

“They had asked if he wanted to do the classes he needed, and go home for the rest of the day,” Begay said. “The other option was for him to complete all of his assignments and he believed he could get it all done and that is what he did.

“That determination to turn in all of his missed assignments really surprised me,” his mother added. “I think a lot of other teenagers would have taken the easy way out, but he just amazed me that he wanted to get caught up with all of his school work.”

In addition to setting up a plan for her son to return to school, Begay went out of her way to get all the services Jayden needed, which included physical, occupational and speech therapies. She also added another neurologist, Dr. Yvette Brown-Shirley, from Barrow Brain Injury & Sports Neurology Center in Phoenix to help with his care.

“I wanted to be on the safe side because I didn’t know what would have happened to where things calm down and everybody goes back to their normal lives and stops checking on him,” Begay said. “That is what I worried about, and my main concern was his mental health. I just tried to stay a step ahead because I didn’t want to see him get down on himself and be depressed. A lot of us don’t really talk about depression. We kind of leave it in the backseat until something happens and that’s when we do realize that people do suffer from depression.

“My biggest worry was him going through a depression state because of not being able to do the activities he enjoys like basketball and football.”

As for his new neurologist, Bia felt at ease under the care of Dr. Brown-Shirley.

“I think seeing that neurologist opened him up a little bit more and it gave him a little bit more confidence,” Begay said. “That doctor is also Navajo and she’s from Sawmill. It was really surprising that his neurologist actually lived down the road to where we live.

That made him feel OK, knowing that she believes in him,” she added.

In the winter, Bia missed the entire basketball season as he was not cleared by his two neurologists to compete in the contact sport. Nonetheless, he did serve as the team’s manager.

“It was hard to not see him on the basketball court, but he was there for every practice whether it was at four o’clock or late at night,” Begay said. “He was at every practice session even though he didn’t play.”

“It wasn’t too bad, but at midseason I started to miss it,” Bia said. “I missed being on the court with my boys. Being the competitive person that I am, I wanted to play.”

Bia eventually got cleared to practice with the team and when the track season started, he was ready to compete.

“He was a little rusty at the beginning of the season, but it didn’t take long for him to get his stride and speed back,” his football and track coach Wilbur Begay said. “We’re really happy that he’s part of the team and from what I see he’s not missed a beat.”

In fact, Bia improved his marks in the long jump and he’s bettered his times in the 100- and 200-meter races.

“I’m actually running a little faster, and I got better with my jumps,” the Window Rock senior said. “We just broke the school record and I’m happy with that.”

And although he’s been cleared to take part in track, Begay still worries about her son.

“I think at times he gets tired of me checking on him,” she said. “But he also understands that we’re still worried about him because of the trauma he went through.”

Looking back, Begay said there were a lot of unknowns. The family didn’t know what his quality of life was going to be and whether Jayden could even participate in sports again.

“He just amazes me every day with all the things he’s done,” Begay said, her voice cracking. “The strides, and the accomplishments he’s made have surprised me. I’m just very thankful that he’s competing at the level that he’s at. He went through a scary ordeal, but when I look at him now, he’s competing in some of the fastest heats, which nobody expected him to do.

“He’s just an inspiration for everyone,” she added. “It’s very uplifting to see him out there competing on the track team, especially with what he went through.”

Bia is set to graduate with his senior class next month and he plans to study sports medicine in college.

“I had an offer to play football in Minnesota, but I’m going to decline that offer,” he said. “I’m going to start at a community college down in the Valley and I want to focus on helping other athletes.

“I would like to have more coaches teach players on the proper way to tackle,” he added. “I want all schools to upgrade its equipment. I know some schools have expired helmets and expired pads and they need to upgrade them every three years to keep kids safe.”

A correction was made on April 17, 2024: An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of the Diné neurologist at the Barrow Neurological Institute’s Brain Injury and Sports Neurology Center in Phoenix. She is Dr. Yvette Brown-Shirley, not Evette Brown-Shirley.

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