Brain injury survivor uses social media to spread hope

For many people, social media is a way to keep in touch with friends and family. For Mike Black, it has become a way to help save lives, starting with his own.

On May 21, 2011, Black was involved in a serious car accident in Orlando, Florida. Black was ejected from his vehicle on impact and landed on his head, shearing his brain stem.

Black was in a coma for several weeks, and doctors were forced to remove a portion of his brain in an effort to save his life. His prognosis was grim.

Black's mother and stepfather, Allen residents Bernadette and Tom Coleman, flew to Orlando to be by his side. Because of the demands Black's care placed on his parents, they often found themselves unable to keep the rest of their family informed of Black's progress. They found a solution through social media, creating a Facebook page called "The Beans Recovery Group."

Though the page began as a means to keep family and friends informed of Black's recovery and progress, it soon found a much wider audience.

"What's crazy is other people started to join the site," Bernadette Coleman said. "People from all around the world started to follow him on Facebook, and many of them were people who had suffered a traumatic brain injury or had a family member who had suffered a traumatic brain injury."

While Black fought for his life, the new visitors to his Facebook page provided not only encouragement and support, but also information from their own experiences that gave the Colemans hope that their son would pull through.

"When the doctors were telling us that there's probably not going to be any hope, chances are he's not going to wake up, other people were saying 'my son was in that same situation a few years ago, and he's getting married next month,'" Bernadette Coleman said. "Those stories of hope and that interaction with those people gave us more power to fight."

After several months of rehabilitation, Black made significant progress. During that time, his mother told him about support he and they received online.

"We would tell him about Facebook and how the people we met on Facebook are still following him, and those were the people who gave us hope when things were really bad," Bernadette Coleman said. "And one day he just said, 'Well, why don't we start a Facebook for people who are going through what we went through?'"

Read the rest here:
Brain injury survivor uses social media to spread hope