Will Renken sits in front of the Christmas tree inside his family’s Greenwood home. Renken, a senior at Greenwood Community High School, will graduate this year, 12 years after a brain injury left him in a medically induced coma and forced him to relearn how to speak, walk and do other simple tasks.
RYAN TRARES | DAILY JOURNAL
The years, and hours of hard work, have rendered the disability invisible.
But Will Renken knows it is there. The brain injury that left him in a medically induced coma for two weeks continues to touch his life in ways big and small. Short-term memory remains a problem, as do tests and other aspects of school.
Processing multiple steps can be difficult and sometimes frustrating.
Still, Renken understands how lucky he is.
“It’s mind-blowing,” he said.
Twelve years after suffering a second-story fall left him with a traumatic brain injury, Renken is on the cusp of graduating from high school. The senior at Greenwood Community High School, though still impacted by the injury in 2011, had adapted to find success in and out of the classroom.
He thinks about what he’s gone through all the time, Renken said.
“I think back often,” he said. ”It’s unbelievable.”
Inside his Greenwood home, signs of how Renken has flourished is all over his family’s Greenwood home. A keyboard set speaks to his interest in music, supported by the piano class he’s taking at school this year. His pens, pencils and other art supplies are important to his love of art, particularly drawing and 2-D works.
One of his prized possessions is a full-sized white husky suit, which he’s named Blitz. Renken worked for months to save enough money to buy the suit; he’s used it to pass out candy for Halloween and at other events, much to the delight to the kids he encounters.
In his free time, Renken plays video games with his siblings, particularly “Halo” and “Call of Duty” with his next-closest brother, 13-year-old Dominic.
“He has a lot of fun with us,” Dominic said. “We enjoy doing those things together.”
That fact that Renken can do those things — that fact that he’s even alive — is a miracle, the family believes.
As a 6-year-old, he was playing at family friend’s house while his parents Marcy and Tom Renken were in southern Indiana at a marriage retreat.
He was playing on a couch on the second floor of the house, next to a railing overlooking a foyer. Somehow, in his exuberance, he fell over the railing to the floor below. Though he somehow was awake, Renken was dazed and acting strangely. The friend watching him suspected a more serious brain injury and called 911.
Emergency medical technicians from Franklin Township rushed to the home, and transported him to Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health. The fall had fractured Renken’s skull from one side of his head to the other. At the same time, the impact had forced his brain to slam into the front of his skull and again into the back, bruising the organ on both sides and causing swelling.
Will Renken required emergency surgery to relieve pressure on his brain, while a shunt was implanted to make sure any excess fluid was released. He was placed in a medically induced coma for two weeks.
For 49 days, he was in the hospital. He had to relearn everything — walking, talking, feeding himself, even breathing on his own.
“It was as if he were a newborn, and his brain had a reset button,” Marcy Renken wrote in a CaringBridge journal in 2011.
What followed has been years of rehabilitation on Will Renken’s injured brain. He has overcome the physical limitations, such as walking and recalibrating his coordination. Counselors and therapists have assisted in helping him learn skills to cope with the lasting effects of the injury.
Though his parents had him repeat first grade as he recovered from his injury, Will Renken had caught up developmentally to his peers by the sixth grade. In particular, he excelled in reading and writing.
School officials at Greenwood have Will Renken on an individualized education program, an accommodation provided to children with special needs to help them succeed in school.
“He’s had an ever-changing team of support behind the scenes, which is great, but also overwhelming, because there are so many different people involved,” Marcy Renken said.
Renken is the oldest of six siblings — besides Dominic, he helps watch Jeremiah, 9, Hope, 7, Robert, 4, and Etta Sue, who is 9-months old. To help them understand what their brother has been through, Marcy Renken wrote a book recounting Will Renken’s experience and all that he’s overcome.
“Every time someone is old enough to understand the nuances of what I call an ‘invisible disability,’ then you can kind of share the book with them and they can understand more about it,” she said.
The injury is an ever-present part of Renken’s life, and the family has tried to show their gratitude for the people who helped save his life. For many years afterward, the family would go to visit Indianapolis Fire Department Station 54 in Franklin Township, where the first-responders who cared for Renken worked from. They’d bring dinner and their thanks. One year, Renken made a fire engine out of LEGOs to give them.
Even after the station closed in 2019, the Renkens kept in touch with some of the EMTs who had worked there. Last year, the family went to their new station during the holidays to sing Christmas carols.
“They had Will’s back, so we want to show that we have theirs,” Marcy Renken said.
As he looks to his future, Will Renken is still weighing what he wants to do. He has an interest in information technology and working with computers, but also is considering art school.
He realizes he has work ahead of him as he finishes up his senior year. Regardless, he’s excited for what comes next, whatever it is.
“It’s a lot,” he said.
