Hope was gone.
When Adam Huffaker was pulled from a Franklin retention pond in 2005, he was unconscious and unresponsive, his pulse nonexistent. Paramedics and doctors didn’t think he would live, or if he’d ever wake from the coma he was in.
Suzanne Huffaker, his mother, was certain she had lost her child.
“Doctors didn’t think he was ever going to make it. He’s a miracle, he really is,” she said.
Not only did Adam Huffaker survive and wake up, he has dedicated himself to recovering from the traumatic brain injury that resulted from the near-drowning. Today, the 26-year-old Franklin resident has relearned many of the skills that he lost — walking, talking, eating, forming short-term memories.
He is thriving, something no one around him could have imagined 16 years ago.
“It feels pretty good. It’s exciting to learn something new,” he said.
From a distance, it seems like the typical summer that any young person would settle into.
Adam Huffaker loves to spend his free time playing Pokémon Go and video games, which are easy to get sucked into and play well into the night, resulting in a late rise the next morning. He has a girlfriend, who he spends much of his time with. Formerly, he had worked at Don & Dona’s in Franklin, and is currently looking for another job.
When the weather is nice, he goes for a walk around his family’s Franklin home — something his mother is still getting used to.
“I was a little scared because he used to get lost. He told me he was going to take off and start walking, and I kind of peeked to make sure he was OK,” Suzanne Huffaker said. “Now, though, he knows he can do it.”
Getting to this point has required 16 years of therapy and a constant desire to defy the odds.
Adam Huffaker and a friend were playing outside on April 5, 2005, when his life changed forever. The 9-year-old boy was wading in the retention pond behind his family’s home, looking for minnows and tadpoles with a strainer.
They did not know that the bottom of the pond sharply dropped off beyond a small 10-foot-wide stretch of shallow water. Adam Huffaker fell into the deeper water, struggling to swim. His friend ran to get help, while a neighbor called police after noticing him splashing in the pond. Frank Huffaker, Adam’s father, had just returned home from work when the friend told him what happened. He ran and dove into the pond, finding his son unmoving underneath the surface and pulling him onto shore.
Paramedics inserted a breathing tube, and he was taken to Johnson Memorial Hospital, where doctors restarted his heart. According to family members, his heart had stopped beating for 20 minutes.
When Adam Huffaker was transferred to the pediatric critical care center at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, doctors told them there was little hope. He likely had only 72 hours to live, they said. But he started breathing on his own after three days.
For weeks, Adam Huffaker needed a respirator to help him breathe, and had a feeding tube implanted. His muscles would spasm uncontrollably. He was in a coma for three months, and nurses didn’t know if he’d wake up. Even after he did, the family was warned that he may never recover.
Progress was slow.
“His body was like a newborn baby when he first came home,” Suzanne Huffaker said. “He had no control over his body. He had to relearn everything. It was a nightmare.”
Adam Huffaker needed to learn to walk, run, eat on his own, write, dress himself and play video games. He spent hours and hours at speech therapy, physical therapy and occupational therapy to regain the skills he had lost in the accident.
But he pushed forward. Video games provided not only a form of entertainment, but allowed him work on hand-eye coordination.
“It really helped me,” he said. “It helped me with my skills and hands.”
Not only two years after the accident, he attended fifth grade at Northwood Elementary School, taking intermediate classes that provided the specialized help he needed. But by the time he was in seventh grade, he was taking regular classes with his classmates.
Adam Huffaker has regained most of the abilities that had been taken by his brain injury. He still does struggle with short-term memory. Direction and location were particularly tricky; often, he would get turned around and lost, even on short trips.
But even that has shown signs of healing.
“His brain injury is so amazing, because it continues to change every year,” Suzanne Huffaker said. “He’ll go around the neighborhood with his phone, and come back home.”
Over the course of his recovery, Adam Huffaker has tried to set an example about bouncing back from setbacks. He’s proud of what he has accomplished, and shares his positive outlook with the people around him.
People who know his story are awed by his recovery — and he inspires his mother by the journey that he’s traveled.
“Therapists told me that I’d be able to relive Adam’s life again, like a baby growing up,” Suzanne Huffaker said. “He’s special.”
