Brayden Methot can lift 10-pound weights with his right arm and ride a handbike thanks to several surgeries and a strong determination to rebuild his strength.
In June 2014, the 27 year old from Williams Lake sustained a C4 spinal cord injury after the truck he was a passenger in collided with another vehicle on Highway 5 near Kamloops, B.C.
“Now I have movement and limited hand dexterity,” Methot told the Tribune during an interview at his parents’ home where he has been living for about three years. “I don’t have any movement below my level of injury at mid-chest, but it does get better every day as far as strength goes. I’m working pretty hard.”
Methot has had two upper extremity reconstructions.
Last winter he had surgery on his left arm, the winter before on his right arm.
“They are called tendon transfers,” he explained of the arm surgeries. “With my level of injury I have strong biceps and can pull in really hard, but I don’t have any triceps function so I cannot push.”
His latest surgery, done last fall at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, has only been around for four years, he explained.
It involved switching a tendon from his biceps over to his triceps.
The surgeries have made a huge difference in his day-to-day movement.
“I could never lift my arm above my head,” Methot said. “I would get up to about shoulder height and I could never push.”
Because of the tendons switch, he has to think differently, programming himself to push instead of pull.
“It’s a mental game for sure,” he added. “See how my thumb moves in? They tied my thumb to my forearm tendon so now all my wrist flexes back and my thumb closes. They put titanium in my thumb.”
Now he can pick up a toothbrush or a beer can, the essentials, he said, chuckling.
Methot doesn’t have much memory about what happened right after the crash, with the exception of arriving at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops by ambulance and learning how significant his injury was.
“They were doing the pin needle test to see where you can feel and cannot feel,” he recalled. “I don’t specifically remember what I couldn’t and could move, but I remember that I could not feel my legs and I could not feel until about mid-chest. That was the scariest part. I knew this injury was the real deal.”
From Kamloops he was airlifted to Vancouver General Hospital where he remained four months before being transferred to the G.F. Strong Centre, where he stayed another five months.
While staying at VGH he was visited by celebrated Paralympic athlete and former Williams Lake resident, Rick Hansen.
“Rick’s an awesome guy — really humble,” Methot said.
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Methot has had breathing complications as a result of his injury, but said his breathing is getting better.
“I have 20 per cent of my diaphragm strength. C4 is a fairly high injury and it’s right around the spot where people could be ventilator-dependent on a breathing machine for the rest of their life. I’m lucky I am not. I focus on my breathing every day as far as exercises I can do.”
He also goes to physiotherapy sessions on Tuesday and Thursday at Cariboo Memorial Hospital, and to Pro Physioworks every once in a while or sometimes a physiotherapist will come to the house to work with him.
“We do work on a plinth,” Methot said. “I get out of my chair and I do balance work and it’s good for core exercise. We do muscle stem work where you hook up positive and negative electrodes and they fire the muscle so you can move your legs and hopefully that establishes a connection from your brain past the level of injury to your leg.”
He is sore after physio, but said it’s a good kind of sore.
Prior to the accident, Methot was working as a blaster in a coal mine near Chetwynd.
He was always active growing up and rode and raced mountain bikes and off-road motorcycles, often with his sister Britany and Brad, his father.
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One of his greatest recent achievements has been to start riding a handbike that was custom-made for him by a man from Utah who has similar injuries.
Bike mechanics Cory Brunelle and Jeremy Stowards at Red Shred’s Bike and Board Shed in Williams Lake did some work on the bike for Methot.
They installed a motor to give him more power and an electronic shifting component that only requires touching a cable.
“It’s been cool watching him progress and all his little victories,” Brunelle said.
Using a lift in the shop at their home, Brad gets Methot into the handbike and then Methot rides from the house doing a loop that’s nearby.
Methot said his dad has the loop timed so if he is not back when he should be, he hops on his bike to come and see if he is stuck in the bush somewhere or needs his help.
Last year he tried biking on the Fox Mountain trails once, but because his bike is three-wheeled, riding on any sort of side hill doesn’t work that well.
“It’s a bit of a mission,” he said. “I went with Cory, my buddy Mitchell and my sister and it took us about three and a half hours to get down.”
His wish is to buy an adaptive downhill bike with full suspension so he can try riding in Whistler where they are some adaptive trails.
Red Shred’s owner Mark Savard, who has been part of developing local mountain bike trails, said there are plans to build an adaptive trail in the Williams Lake area.
At the BC Mountain Bike Symposium held last fall in Revelstoke, Savard attended a session on adaptive trail building.
“I was in tears, thinking about what you could do to give someone an opportunity they wouldn’t have thought was possible,” Savard told the Tribune. “If you can build a trail for someone that’s in an adaptive wheelchair or downhill bike it’s a huge benefit, and it’s also good for lots of other people. Kids can ride it down and intermediate riders can ride up.”
For adaptive trails there is more extensive planning involved than a normal mountain bike trail, he added.
With the help of friends, and donations from the community, including Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Methot said his parents renovated their home to make it accessible. They turned a plant room into a bedroom for him and there are ramps leading in and out of the house.
Grateful for the support he’s had all along from friends, Methot said he has it “so good.”
“Let’s face it, if I didn’t have the friends that I have I would be stuck at home,” he said. “I cannot drive right now. If I didn’t have somebody to go riding with, that would be hell, for sure.”
Methot said he is only three years into his recovery and it’s far from over.
“I just believe I’m postponing some of the activities and dreams I am going to be pursuing.”