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In 2015, at the World Tour Finals in Whistler, Canada, professional skier Jamie MoCrazy suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The elite athlete collapsed into a coma on the mountain as doctors raced to treat multiple brain bleeds. Her recovery meant learning how to talk, walk and ski again.
Today, she leads the non-profit, MoCrazy Strong Foundation, to educate TBI survivors and family caregivers "on ways to understand how to build a productive life worth living after brain injury."
Jamie hosts the Life Gets MoCrazy podcast and recently released her documentary #MoCrazy Strong.
MoCrazy Strong Foundation:
www.mocrazystrong.org
Life Gets MoCrazy Podcast:
Today, she leads the non-profit, MoCrazy Strong Foundation, to educate TBI survivors and family caregivers "on ways to understand how to build a productive life worth living after brain injury."
Jamie hosts the Life Gets MoCrazy podcast and recently released her documentary #MoCrazy Strong.
MoCrazy Strong Foundation:
www.mocrazystrong.org
Life Gets MoCrazy Podcast:
Creators & Guests
Host
Guest
What is Me, Myself & TBI: Facing Traumatic Brain Injury Head On ?
Me, Myself & TBI: Facing Traumatic Brain Injury Head On provides information and inspiration for people affected by brain injury. Each episode, journalist and TBI survivor Christina Brown Fisher speaks with people affected by brain injury. Listen to dive deep into their stories and lessons learned.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Hello! Welcome to the show, “Me, Myself and TBI: Facing Traumatic Brain Injury Head On.” I’m your host Christina Brown Fisher.I am a traumatic brain injury survivor, and my guest today survived what can only be described as a horrific brain injury --- but she’s emerged from that journey, stronger and has become a vocal, outspoken --- force to be reckoned with --- advocate --- for people impacted by traumatic brain injury. Former professional skier Jamie MoCrazy, the first woman to double flip in a slopestyle ski run. In 2015 at the World Ski and Snowboard Festival in Whistler, Canada, the World Tour finals --- upon landing, Jamie whiplashed her head into the snow when it caught an edge of her ski. The resulting injury caused her brain to bleed in eight different spots. She fell into a coma, was paralyzed on her right side, and as she was being airlifted off the mountain, doctors prepared to tell her family she had no chance of surviving.Her award-winning documentary MoCrazy Strong is at times heartbreaking as you watch a young lady who was destined for the Olympics struggle to walk, talk --- and remember her former self.
But it also serves as a beautiful reminder of the power of love in the face of tragedy. Jamie joined me from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Hi, Jamie, welcome to the show. It's so great, so great to talk to you today.
Jamie MoCrazy:
I'm so happy to be here.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Oh, my goodness. What a harrowing story, and we are going to get there. We're going to jump right into that in a few moments, but I feel like before we get to that that day in 2015, I want to talk about what led you to the ski slopes in the first place. My understanding, you were on skis as early as one-year-old, is that right?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, I started skiing when I was a year old because. Skiing actually passes down through my family from my great grandmother to my grandmother, who is a World Cup downhill champion to my mom and me. And my mom started not because she wanted me to become a professional and had dreams of that. She started me because she wanted to go outside and play with her babies on the snow.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Well, you did more than play. I saw a video in which your mom talks about the introduction to skiing starting as early as one, and that you were you were doing Black Diamond Downhill as early as three, three years old. Is that right?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, I picked up skiing really quickly. I could scale over the mountain at a very young age. So I don't actually remember that. So my whole childhood introduction to skiing, I have no memory of. When I when I go back in my mind, I was already a skier and I was already competitive and I was performing. I was competing in different things. I was putting on performances from my family and I was a skier. Which is interesting because fast forward to what we're going to talk more about. But my brain injury, I don't remember any of that either. So there's a lot in my life that has been very important into helping define who I am today that I actually don't remember.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You don't remember? And yet you know that it's critical in the making of who you are?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, exactly. That's a very well -- well put.
Christina Brown Fisher:
That's remarkable, that's really amazing. And I also understand that at an early age, you were involved in gymnastics, which was really a precursor to how you so quickly became successful as a as a freestyle skier. When did you start in gymnastics?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I started gymnastics similar to skiing when I was like two-years-old. Before my memory, I started a little Gymboree classes. And so, I start, I started, you know, a lot of parents just take their kids, to do little tumbling classes. And then I loved it and I excelled at it. So, I started into the competitive program, and I started competing, in, when I was done, single digits, like six, seven, eight. I was competing in gymnastics and competing in ski racing.
Christina Brown Fisher:
When did you know, though, that skiing was really where your heart was at and where you would find the most amount of success, professional success?
Jamie MoCrazy:
That was probably when I was in my teenage years. I loved gymnastics. So when I was back six, seven, eight competing, I had my mindset that I wanted to go to the Olympics and I would do whatever it took to go to the Olympics, and I wasn't sure which sport that was going to be because I was on a premier soccer team and I actually went to Kristine Lilly's soccer camp and I won VIP of the camp because I headed a corner kick into the goal and I was a really competitive gymnast and I won when I was nine, state championships in gymnastics, in the same year, state championships in skiing. And at that time, I'd say my goal was to combine skiing and gymnastics. So I knew that I loved them both and skiing did kind of give me a freedom, um I think it gave me more of a freedom than the other sports that I was doing.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You said you weren't 100% dead set?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I wasn't 100% set on pursuing just skiing. I continued to do gymnastics. And it was interesting because actually when I was like ten, 11, 12, my gymnastics teacher just wanted me to do gymnastics and my ski coach just wanted me to do skiing. But I continued to do both because I loved to flip and I loved to ski. So it took me a while to combine the two and realize that there was something that was flipping on snow. And part of that was because slopestyle and half pipe skiing didn't even go to the X Games when I was a child. Like they didn't even exist. And then when they started going to the X Games for a decade, they were male only sport. So only men competed in the X Games. And so about the time that I started doing it was still close to the beginning of its evolution of actually becoming a competitive sport. Some there's some local legends that have done it before. It was competitive and before it was X games, they were just flip on the snow or spin on the snow. But I was kind of at the beginning of it becoming competitive.
Christina Brown Fisher:
When did you realize that that was something that you actually wanted to focus on and zero in on? I'm going to own this the sport, this competition.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, it actually happened very quickly in that regard. So, like I mentioned, it took years of kind of doing both. But when I was at my first year at a school called Holderness Prep School and I was ski racing there, and I was convinced to go to trampoline camp and switch into freestyle. And that summer, um was my first ever water ramp camp. Water ramp is when you slide down plastic and you flip with your skis on into water. And so I went there and like my first day, I learned how to do a front flip. My third day, I learned how to do a backflip. And by the fifth day, I was auditioning with the aerial development team and I was told I could stay living at the Olympic Training Center all fall, and join the team and my lodging would be covered and give it a go. And I was like, "ep, I gave it a go. So it literally was like within a week became a career. And then I was training every single day on it. So that first winter I was already podiuming at events and my career was taking off.
Christina Brown Fisher:
For people who aren't familiar with this style of skiing. Explain what differentiates this from, what most people think of skiing, which is, “I'm just going downhill,” and, you know, in my case, “I just don't want to fall.”
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, so slopestyle is multiple jumps and rails and you're judged on the overall impression. You spin to the left, to the right, you take off backwards and then you slide down rails, which are like pieces of metal that you slide, and you switch ups and tricks on, and you're judged on the impression of your whole run. So the deegree of difficulty as well as execution. And then for half pipe, it's half of a tube made out of snow and you go up and you do tricks in the air on either, either side of the wall. And similar to slopestyle, you're judged on overall impressions or whether you're spinning to the left, or to the right, adds to the degree of difficulty. And it's your whole run they are judged on.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And when you when you start on this, I mean, just hearing you talk about it, you can hear the excitement. But when you're starting, how much of that excitement is also just muted by the danger that you're embarking on as well?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, it was interesting because I love adrenaline rushes. It's actually something interesting because we've had some talks with other brain injury survivors about the difference between an adrenaline rush and doing something that you think is definitely going to be dangerous. So what I mean by that, is like, when you're walking out on the stage as a motivational speaker, which is what I do now, and you have an audience of a thousand people in front of you, you get a rush. Like you want to, and that rush will allow you to perform to the best degree that you can perform at. And the same thing with competing and skiing and things like that. When you're, when you're doing a new trick where you get that adrenaline rush and it's very similar to anxiety or fear, but it, it, it's not the same. But you'll see people who are exceptional at competition or performance and they know how to harness it and use that energy that dopamine to the best that it can be used. And then also that same dopamine can be used for anxiety, which is why a lot of people after a brain injury, really struggle with the emotional side of things because their dopamine doesn't know if they should be on guard and terrified all the time or if they to relax and get it.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Yeah, it's that perpetual fight or flight fight or flight mode. Yeah. Whereas anxiety and fear is crippling keeps you from from doing the things that you want to do. What you're talking about is the adrenalin was actually motivating for you. Were there any falls prior to the big one, the one that we're going to be discussing? Were there any falls even just in the the training period or prior to the one in 2015 that you look back on and think that those were significant as well?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, there were. So, I actually tore my ACL twice. So, I had tp get ACL surgery and I actually had two concussions that I blacked out at. And one of the things that's really interesting is that for both my concussions after I blacked out, even though this was like a decade ago, so there was less of an understanding of what to do for concussions, since my mom has a master’s in psychology and studied early childhood brain development and she's been super involved in neuroplasticity for the past 20 years, way before my accident. So, when I got concussions, she knew some of the things to have me do and like my, my nutrition and to stay away from electronics. But still, she actually would promote that, I do really gentle things like walking, which now people have seen that with peer reviewed research, um, when you have a concussion, you no longer want to just sit in the dark and turn everything off because then your heart rate is not pumping, your blood's not flowing through your body as fast. So, it actually doesn't heal as well as if you do gentle things like walking. But that's what she would have me do. And I remember, um, after one of, one of my concussions, um and, obviously, drink no alcohol. And I was 21, and, a couple of my friends, I was like a couple days out of it, and I felt pretty fine, and they were like, “Oh, no one will know. like, drink, have some alcohol, like why are you taking this so seriously? You’re better, it doesn't really matter.”
Christina Brown Fisher:
You knew not to do that.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Yeah, that's important. In 2015 and obviously we're going to get there. Let's talk about your career leading up to 2015 because you peaked really quickly. I mean, you had a very ambitious goal, which were the Olympics. Correct. And and how optimistic were you about about meeting that goal? So just educate the audience a little bit on the various competitions and the titles that you were holding going into 2015, what you had done thus far.
Jamie MoCrazy:
So I had the first year I was at Junior Olympics, I got second at two events and then the next year I won the overall. I won aerials, I won slopestyle, got third and half pipe, and I went to Junior Olympics. No, sorry, I went to junior World Championships in New Zealand that summer and I won junior world championships. And so, oh, I actually was talking with the International Olympic Committee, the IOC, about adding slopestyle to the Olympics because it wasn't even an Olympic sport at the time, and the IOC was there because they were thinking about adding it to the next Olympics, which was 2014, which they did add it to. And then I went to the X Games. I became the first woman in the world to double flip. I went to European X Games. So they only choose eight girls out of the entire world to go to X Games. And I had been ranked first or second overall in the world for three years prior to 2015. And actually 2014 was one of the times when I hurt my knee. So I didn't go to the Olympics and I was dead set that I was, you know, I was only 21. I had a long career ahead of me. Even though skiing's not that long, it's still long enough.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Yeah, but at 21, you know that you still had a few more competitions, Olympic level competitions ahead of you.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Exactly, and then I had my brain injury and even after the brain injury, I was pretty positive that I was going to go to the Olympics. And that's been one of the things that has been psychologically challenging for me right after my brain injury during their recovery, but sometimes is still challenging. And at this point I have made enough changes, and my brain has experienced enough plasticity that I don't believe that my struggles with fear of thinking something's going to happen and getting ripped away, that obviously has to do with my trauma, but it's not directly correlated to my brain injury.
Christina Brown Fisher:
I see. When you go into these competitions explain what it takes in order to get the gold, the so in order to place. And what I'm getting at, it's important for the audience to understand the intensity, the severity, obviously, of what you're doing the reason I say this, because I'm talking about some of the articles that I've read in which there are quotes from you and your sister, which is there's an expectation, right? That you got, you got to push the envelope further and further and further because of the scoring system, No one's going to remember the fourth-place finisher. So, if you can explain to me kind of what it takes to do these flips, to do these really it’s flying acrobatics. I want, I want to, I want to have an understanding of what training looks like in order to achieve these aerial acrobatics on snow.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, well, some of the things that are really important to achieve these air acrobatics is to make sure you work through progression. So you take that every day to learn new things. So progression is really important. So every trick you do, like when you do a 180, then you do a 360, which is like a full spin around, then you do like a 540. You don't just think of these like double corks and you're not going to get it right away. So you have these goals and you know, it has to take all these steps to get to those goals. And the steps take a lot of repetition. They take thousands and thousands of repetition of the same exact thing until you get it good enough that you can do it on all the different sized jumps and all the different types of weather. And so that's one of the things. So when you're going to do a competition, you know, you feel confident that you can do the tricks that you're going to do. And so you need to take some at least for me, what I do is I would take two deep breaths. I would visualize with my eyes and take some deep breaths and vacate my mind, get everything out of my mind, take deep breath, and then drop in and go. And then you need to just depend on your instincts to kick in. And the repetition and the training that has built up to that.
Christina Brown Fisher:
What happens on April 11th, 2015? Where were you in that competition leading up to what would be this tragic fall,an accident?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, well, what happened on April 11, 2015, is interesting because I honestly have no memories of the entire day. So I know that I've been told that it was the slopestyle competition day and it was my second run and I was sitting in fourth place after first run. So I wanted to upgrade because I was very competitive and I, and I do have memories of my life prior to my brain injury. So I remember that I was and I still am very competitive and ambitious, so I know that. But the whole day I don't have any memory of that day of competition. But I was dropping in and I had upgraded my off axis backflip to an off axis double backflip. And when I dropped in, my little sister actually watched this all happen and she could see my take off on the jump that I was double flipping, but she couldn't see my landing because of the way the mountain rolled. And then she didn't see me hit the next jump. However, that's not that unusual, it's like not hit the next jump or to fall in slopestyle, that, that happens a lot. So she didn't really think much of it until she heard the ski patrol radio crackled to life that was right next to her. And it said we need all hands on deck and a helicopter on standby. And in that moment, she knew it was really serious. So without a word, she and my coach put on their skis and ski down to me. And I've heard this from my sister many times now and it still gives me shivers the way she describes seeing me convulsing on the snow, spewing blood, and that my eyes were rolled back in my head, She said, that whole experience, like she can still see it clearly in her mind. It's a memory that's never going to go away. And I didn't look like her sister. I looked like a zombie. And from what I've heard from people, when they when they came to start taking care of me, I had zombie strength as well. So I was just like lifting up like 150-pound people with my with my one arm because I was just doing whatever my body wanted to, but it wasn't how you usually function.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You said, Jamie, correct me if I'm wrong, you said this was your fourth run or you were saying you were in fourth, you were in the fourth place slot at this point?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I was in the fourth place slot.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Okay, so do you and you said that you felt like you needed to crank up. So this next run needed to be more provocative, more dynamic.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Okay, do you recall practicing what you had done? Because you talk about your memory being blank for that day, but do you recall practicing that technique in maybe the days or weeks leading up to it?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, I, I do remember like practicing double backflips, and I, and I do remember doing the off axis double tricks because I, I had done it before, but I have really no memory of that particular run that particular day. And I don't really have much memory of the whole trip up to Vancouver. So, like there's a couple days before my accident that I don't remember either.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Wow, that's really something. So, at this point, it's my understanding that doctors are looking at you, you're being airlifted to a nearby hospital. You've got eight brain bleeds, you're being airlifted and doctors are they're readying themselves to tell your parents that it doesn't look like you're going to survive. What do you recall? What is your earliest memory following this?
Jamie MoCrazy:
So, my earliest memory is a couple months later. So, I have a huge portion of it that I don't remember. And because my family and I do so much media, I've heard my mom and my sister tell the story so many times. So, I know what happened. I know that when I arrived at Vancouver General Hospital, one of the doctors had just come back from Cambridge, England, I guess, actually a month prior, and he had learned about a procedure which is an intracranial monitoring device that we call the "brain bolt." Where they drill into your skull and insert a device that reads your oxygen as well as your pressure level. So, they had done it prior. Just reading out the pressure level, which is how they know when to remove part of your skull. But this new technique of reading out your oxygen level to your brain was new and they realized one of the days that the oxygen monitoring device on my finger said I was fine, but on my brain said I was close. I was one point away from permanent brain damage. So, because I was on electronics, I wasn't doing anything for myself. They increased the amount of oxygen flowing through my body and that allowed my brain to never get oxygen deprived enough that it had permanent brain damage.
Christina Brown Fisher:
I see, so, you wake up two months later, you're surrounded by your family. I read online and also saw some interviews with your mother in which she demanded that medical staff and family and friends speak to you, treat you as though at any moment you were walking out of there. In other words, she had optimism that that the doctors clearly didn't have. Can you talk a little bit about that and some of the stories that you've heard and what, if anything, you might remember about her presence and how she wanted people to interact with you while you were because you were in a coma at this point?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, when I was in the coma, actually, um, one of the stories that's told a lot is, one of the days my older sister became my primary care physician because she was a doctor in Connecticut, actually in New York City at the time, and an anesthesiologist, but they legally made her my primary care physician. So she was making the rounds with the doctors, and then she said legally that my mom had to make the rounds as well to give advice on how I behaved through like the families connection to me, not the medical jargon or things like that, but a different type. And one of the days, one of the doctors who was actually doing their residency, so not fully fledged yet, but wanted to make sure that they were doing everything and was saying how I was never going to live independently. I was never, ever going to be normal. I was never going to survive back to who they thought I would be. And both my mom and my sister said, "You cannot say that in front of her. You need to leave the room. You cannot say that in front of Jamie." And he was like, "What? Jamie's in a coma. Like, Jamie doesn't know what I'm talking about." And they were like, "Get out, you cannot say that in front of her." And now there's more and more research going into the fact that when people are in comas, they do have some type of understanding. It's not as clear as like you and I on a regular basis have, but they do have a little bit of an understanding. And when I woke up during the time when I had the serious amnesia, so I was awake from the coma. But I don't have right now any memory of that time with the amnesia, I kept saying day after day for a whole week, "I just wanted to be normal." And as someone who had been a professional skier, I never was normal. So my mom was like, "Why, why are you, like so wanting to be normal?" And I was like, "Because that guy, that man, said I would never be normal, and I want to be normal." And there's more and more studies that are showing that people have some type of recollection and experience and understanding when they are in, in comas.
Christina Brown Fisher:
That just gave me chills. I got goose bumps right now because what you're saying is that you clearly, even though you were in a coma and at this point, you had not shown any signs of consciousness, any indication of communication with anyone. You're in a coma. Clearly, on some level, you heard and understood that this resident what he had been saying to your family about you not leading a normal life. It had registered subconsciously because when you do wake up from the coma, all you're talking about is “I want to be normal.” And your mom is asking “why is there such a preoccupation around that?” And it's because you had indeed heard what this doctor had said when he thought that you were, you know, “just in a in a coma.” You had heard everything, which means, that means you're taking in everything, all the energy, all the emotion, all the highs and lows of your family, even though you're in this comatose state.
Jamie MoCrazy:
So that's one of the big things. Yeah, yes, and that's one of the things that's really important is that when you're in a coma, you do experience things. And one of the things that's actually in our documentary is we interview the doctor who actually came back from Cambridge, England, to learn this procedure. And he's talking about how prior to my my case, he was under the impression that in critical coma we needed to keep the brain completely calm. So, I didn't have the family members around. You didn't want to touch patients?
Christina Brown Fisher:
Didn't want to stimulate at all.
Jamie MoCrazy:
You don't want to do anything to excite them. And in the documentary, my mom talks about how when she was walking down the hall, my, my machines would all go to light because I understood that it was my mom coming to see me and I would get excited. And now they actually know that, that helps. You come back from the coma and wake up again is, if you have family involvement.
Christina Brown Fisher:
That's amazing, that's an amazing. Oh, gosh, oh, Jamie, did you ever think that you'd lived to tell this story?
Jamie MoCrazy:
It's kind of interesting because I, um, before my accident, after my competitive career, because I knew you can only be a competitive athlete for so long. Ah, that, I wanted to be a motivational speaker and I thought that I would tell people about what it took to climb the mountain of life and get to the top. And then all of a sudden, my life changed dramatically. And after a couple of years of recovery, I started being sought after to speak and tell people how you can climb the mountain of life, get caught in a metaphorical avalanche, and then climb an alternative peak, which I think is actually much more powerful. If you've had any form of success in your life and then it gets taken away. How do you recreate success, rebuild your identity? That's really relevant for everybody, because everybody has different traumas in their life and every work workplace does too. Things are just going along smoothly and then something will happen. How do you stay relevant?
Christina Brown Fisher:
Yeah, how do you shapeshift to the new reality? So, your new reality now is you're coming out of a coma. And let's talk about all of the different things that you had to overcome. My understanding, you had to learn how to walk, talk, eat, drink. What? What were those early days and weeks like for you when you came out of the coma?
Jamie MoCrazy:
The very early days in the hospital were lots of fun. I was pretty happy most of the time. I was really giggly. I was like a silly ten-year-old.
Christina Brown Fisher:
How was that fun? How was it fun? I mean, I guess it's fun because you've come out of the coma, but how was the rest of it, fun?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, I thought it was fun because I, I didn't think I was in a hospital. I thought I was in a movie. And I had pictures all over my wall. I had a hammock in my room, and I did lots of workouts every day, and I got to eat good food and I got some massages and I got to meditate. So that's why I thought it was fun because I love working out and I love doing things that my body can't do. So, like pushing the limit.
Christina Brown Fisher:
But how are you communicating? My understanding is you're learning how to eat and drink. You're having to relearn how to walk and talk I guess I'm just trying to understand, is that because there was a break from reality, and so that's why it was fun? The reality of what has happened hasn't quite set in.
Jamie MoCrazy:
So part of, some of both, so, one of the things is that my initial, like, when I was in a wheelchair and my initial relearning how to walk and my initial relearning how to talk I don't remember. So, I don't remember those days when my mind came back, I was already, I had gone through different levels of the hospital. I was on the inpatient rehab so, I was already up to that level. And in my mind I was just working out every day and the reality did not set in. I was, I knew pretty quickly when my mind was coming back that I had been a skier and I equivalated my brain injury like a torn ACL. I had gone through that before. And when you tear your ACL, you can't walk for a period of time. You can't put weight on your leg and you can't even get up and use your crutches like you can't move. And then you go through these different stages. So that's kind of what I was thinking, is that "okay, well, been here, done this before." Like, "I'll just go through these different stages, it's great. I have like really good food coming to me all the time." Because my, I would have food brought in to me every day and it was like exactly what...
Christina Brown Fisher:
Right, because you're at the hospital.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, and because my, my older sister actually would bring in food from our house and she would make the meals and it was always what I wanted. I got to choose every meal. And then we would eat as a family in the hospital room. So I was pretty happy.
Christina Brown Fisher:
It's almost like they created a bubble for you, right? Because it seems as though, from what you're telling me, that you did not probably fully know or realize the severity of your brain injury, Is that right?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, and it took me a long time to figure out the severity of my brain injury. So, after I left the hospital, I still my mom would say my recovery was miraculous and I would be like, "Well, that's a mom thinking I'm a miracle." Like, every mom thinks their kid's a miracle, like great. And then people would ask me, like, “how critical it was,” and I was like, "oh, not that bad." And then they would ask, "like, if it was medically induced or natural," and I'd be like, "probably medically induced," like that, but it was natural. It wasn't until my one-year anniversary. And that was when I met my doctor, and I saw him crying when, when he saw me and I met my first responders, the ski patrol. And I found out that they wrote my fatality report, and they didn't think, they thought I had a 1% chance of living. And so who I became am I'm talking with you, they fought for that chance, but they didn't really think it was going to happen. And so then all of a sudden, I realized that it had been really critical and all of a sudden this platform was born to bring awareness to brain injury recovery. Because I also found out over the course of my recovery that there's not enough awareness to the fact that you can recover. I went to a conference and I was about four months out, five months out, so I was out of the hospital, but I was not recovered or close to being fully recovered.
Christina Brown Fisher:
My understanding is that you were out of the hospital, correct me if I'm wrong. You were in the hospital for two months. Is that right?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And then following your release from the hospital, you were in rehabilitative care for five days, five days a week, outpatient, rehabilitative care?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes. So, I was living at home, but in rehabilitative care
Christina Brown Fisher:
And living at home, are you in Connecticut or are you in Utah at this point?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I'm in Utah, I’m in Park City, Utah.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You're in Park City, Utah? When you were in the hospital, you were in the Vancouver hospital for two months, or did they transfer you to Utah?
Jamie MoCrazy:
They transferred me. So I was in the Vancouver General Hospital and then they transferred me, actually while I was still in the coma to the Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And then from there, you're doing five day a week outpatient rehabilitative care. Talk to me about what that care looks like. What different therapies are you going through at that point?
Jamie MoCrazy:
So I was going to occupational therapy, physical therapy, and speech therapy. So I was relearning how to do everything, basically, um, so relearning how to move, and then relearning how to think things through. I had to relearn how to drive a car. My license was taken away from me, but I was incredibly fortunate that I could receive five days of outpatient therapy because that's not usually the option. And so, I received some money from the Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Fund for the state of Utah. And one of the things that was so crucial to my recovery was that there was no financial constraints on it. It wasn't that you had to have, a low enough amount money, or a high enough amount of money. Cause the amount of money that goes into a brain injury recovery, statistics say that if you're in a critical brain injury, it will cost you roughly $4 million for your recovery. That does not mean that the individual pays that much, um, the insurance does cover a lot of it, like my medical Learjet they flew me back was $150,000. We didn't have to pay for that, but it does cost a ton of money. And your outpatient rehabilitation costs a lot of money. And most insurances have a cap, and they will only cover about 30 treatments or so. So even if you are making a recovery, they will stop paying for your recovery. And when they stop, that's when the Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Fund for the state of Utah kicked in. But only 28 states have any rehabilitation funding. And so, it's so, it can vary so dramatically, and it's really challenging because when I was doing the outpatient therapy, I couldn't drive a car. And I'm not at all who is talking to you right now. Like people have even mentioned like, they have talked with me two years down the road and I wasn't who I am right now, but especially going back to that rehabilitation timeframe, it would have been so easy if I had gotten cut off and I still had detriments for them to become permanent disabilities and then for me to live off of permanent disability insurance for the rest of my life. As a 22-year-old, that would be roughly 60 years. So by not allowing individuals to have enough opportunity to get the upfront care that they need, there are many individuals who are suffering from disability from a brain injury that could have been treated and still can be treated.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And still could be treated, yeah. Jamie I do want to get to your advocacy because this is a very important part of your story and a very important conversation. But what I did want to focus on just for a little bit longer is, I wanted to focus on something that I had read or actually I think maybe you and I had discussed this in one of our previous conversations in that my understanding is that even while you were in the hospital and preparing for release, and I guess also in the early in the early stages of your rehabilitative care, you were still focused on returning to professional skiing. Is that right? In the beginning?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, up until the first winter and like the middle of the first winter, I thought I was going to compete again. And I was just going to return to the life that I had previously had. And then in the middle of the winter, I began to realize that to be a professional skier, you you fall a lot. And if I fell again, it could be much more dramatic than people without as much damage to their brain as I did. And I would be putting the support and love that I had received at risk and it really, really made me feel terrible to think that I might be making the choice to die before my mom, in front of my mom if I went back to competing, and I couldn't do that. And so I stepped away from competing and that's when I stepped into psychotherapy. I started going to see a therapist because I was having so much trouble letting go of ((unitelligible)) of that part of my life.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You were saying, Jamie, that for a significant amount of time following the accident and the resulting severe traumatic brain injury, what was motivating you to recover and rehabilitate, what was motivating you to be so aggressive with your rehabilitation was your desire to return to the slopes as a professional skier is that right?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, I did think I was planning on going back to competing, but I just have always been kind of an overachiever and put a lot of pressure on myself. That something that I did before my brain injury and I do, I do now. That's just part of who I am. And sometimes it, it can be too much. Like sometimes I have to rein it in, but that is part of why I have accomplished so much over my whole life and through my recovery, is just, I had goals.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You wanted to go back and hit it again?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I just knew I was going to be okay, and I was going to do what it took to become okay. And that's one of the big things that really helped with the fact that even though I didn't realize how critical it was and I thought I was going to be okay, I also had been coached my whole life, so I knew that anybody has a coach. No matter how good of an athlete you are, you have a coach at top level. So, I would just keep going and doing rehabilitation. And then when that finished, I went to do more stuff and I would hear and learn things about how important it is to stimulate your mind every day. And so, I would make sure to be doing Duolingo programs every day and just...
Christina Brown Fisher:
What kind of programs?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Duolingo, like it's a language learning app.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Oh, Duolingo, Okay.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, Duolingo, so just little things like that. But I kind of think a bit of it was that I wanted to return to competing professionally, but that went away after that first winter. And then I still had years of recovery, and I continued to recover. And I think part of that was just who I was. How I've been raised and that understanding of if you have goals, take, set the steps to create those goals. Like we were talking about with learning tricks, it takes repetition and little steps and lots and lots of steps. It's the same thing recovering from a brain injury. It takes repetition to rewire your brain and it takes building those habits and lots of little steps. You can't just make jumps, and so that's just stayed very relevant.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You talk about that first winter and again, I'm just trying to kind of follow your recovery story in a linear fashion right now. You talk about that first winter. So, for several months you are kind of moving forward with this mindset of “I'm going to return to the slopes. I am a professional skier and a professional skier skis.” That's the journey that you're on. But then that first winter, there's a shift, something changes. What was that shift? How did you move from I want to ski again to what you're doing now, which is brain injury advocacy.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, I, I did go back to skiing, so I was skiing. But then when I progressed to the point where I was like, starting to hit like, boxes again, which is like warmups for ((unintelligible)) like easy boxes. And I was doing 360s I began to realize I had to relearn all of my tricks all over again. And it was kind of a month-long process of just going in and out and in and out. And um, I didn't directly decide that I was never going to compete again. I just pushed it farther away. So, though, that got pushed farther away and then some things like I didn't go back to do it back. I have never done a backflip on snow again. And last winter, like last fall was the first fall I didn't think I was going to do a backflip on snow that year. Every other fall I was like, okay, this is going to be the year that I do a backflip on snow. And it took until last fall for me to decide that that part of my life was over. So there's been a lot of ups and downs about it. It's not like just like a clear line. It's not like I just decided it and there's a lot of things that tie into it. I think something that helped me last year was that I at at this time last year, I had made the documentary. I've worked with the editor and and we were getting post-production and sound design and music composition and all the, we hired a lot of people and all that stuff. And I figured it was really time for a new chapter in my life. But it, it took it, it was really hard to understand that. It just so instantly went away, and it took me a long time to figure that out, that none of it was coming back.
Christina Brown Fisher:
What kind of support did you now need when you recognized that your identity as a professional skier was no more?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Well, I started going to psychotherapy. And it's interesting, at that time, I didn't really think I needed psychotherapy.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Why did you think you didn't need psychotherapy?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I thought you only should go to therapy if you had big problems, and I kind of thought it meant that you had issues. I thought I was supposed to be grateful that I was alive. I was doing things like announcing out Winter Dew Tour. And I kind of thought that you go to therapy if you have a crippling life, and I was supposed to like my life, and it was supposed to be fine. But my mom, she knew that I needed to go to therapy. And she tricked me into going to therapy a little bit.
Christina Brown Fisher:
She tricked you. How’d she do that?
Jamie MoCrazy:
She, there's an organization called Hi Fives Foundation that did some financial support where insurance doesn't cover. And so she said that they had already paid for my therapy. So if I didn't go, I would be wasting their money. And I can never always someone else's money. So I went to the first one and I sobbed the whole time and I realized how important it was to go to therapy.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And so you go to psychotherapy, you are recognizing that this identity that you've created for yourself as an elite athlete must shift. It has to change. At what point do you recall the acceptance of that? Or are you still working on that?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I was going to say, I don't think there's, there's ever like a clear acceptance of it. It took until last fall was the first fall when, when the winter was coming. And I didn't think that I was going to go to a back flip on snow again. Every other year I was like, "this is going to be the year that I do a backflip again on snow." And now I realize that part of my life, that chapter has ended and I'm doing different things, but it's still something I work, I work on sometimes that I was so dead set on it happening, and even though it's very ambitious and a big challenge to go to the Olympics, I just I was so sure I was going to do it. And then I was I was so sure that I was going to recover from my brain injury. And I did recover from my brain injury. And I didn't go to the Olympics. And and now I do still struggle with feeling confident that something is going to happen, if, if, it's a big dream.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Yeah, I can imagine. I've been there. I've been there. I know that feeling. How did you transition into the role that you have now? And talk about why you lead a nonprofit. I want to talk about that, the organization. But you're also a brain injury advocate. I know that you have spoken to legislators on on Capitol Hill. And and you've also been quite candid about the access to health care that you received was a privilege that so many more so many others just don't have access to.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, well, we actually took some notes to talk with the Utah legislative about the same the same thing, because the average monthly Social Security disability insurance for the state of Utah is $1,351.22. It's not that much money. And for a year it goes to $16,214. But then if you take in somebody like me who is 22 and they live on disability for their whole life, that's roughly 60 years of my life that would result in $972,878. All of a sudden, that's a little bit of a bigger number. And then if you just take that number and you take it by the number of individuals the Brain Injury Alliance of Utah worked with in 2022 with resource facilitation, they worked with 150 individuals. So, you take that number times 150. All of a sudden, you're looking at $145,931,760. And the fact that there are so many of those individuals that do not have the resources to make a recovery and their disability is permanent because they don't have the opportunities is actually such a financial drain on the U.S. And part of the reason I'm such a strong advocate is because going back to my older sister, when my older sister went to Georgetown Medical School, she was taught that you had about two years to recover from your brain injury damage, and that mostly neuroplasticity only happened in the cortical stages of development. So your birth, the first two years of life or the first two years post injury, your brain.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Which we know is not true anymore.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Exactly, but she was taught at one of the top medical schools that your brain does not have plasticity on its own, for, for the life of your brain, which now we know it does. We now know that your brain injury can recover at any time your brain has enough plasticity to rebuild these brain pathways at any time in your life. It is still thought that it's a little bit faster. If you have more rehabilitation up front, you can recover, but it's a little bit smoother for that plasticity to form. But it can happen at any time and that understanding is not really understood. And what I mean by that is when I was about four months out of my brain injury, I went to a conference about brain injury and every one of the speakers was giving kind of the same story about how they had a brain injury 20 years ago. These are their problems. They need to learn how to accept their problems, and this is why they don't have a good life. And my mom, my sister and I were like, "that's not happening to us. That's not what we're going to be doing.”
Christina Brown Fisher:
So you reject that that thought process that you're going to be defined by the TBI?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, I rejected that and that I would 20 years down the road and my I'd still have problems. And that's part of what I talk about, about climbing alternative peaks. My life is different. It did have dramatic changes because of my brain injury. That is a big portion of my life, and especially now that I have a nonprofit tied to it. I talk about brain injury just about every day. However, I climbed an alternative peak in my life that I'm living with, my husband right now is wonderful, glorious. I have a multi award winning documentary. I'm going to speak to people who I'm leaving the audience in tears and and feeling motivated that they can climb alternative peaks as well. And it's pretty beautiful. But one of the big things is that other people can do that as well. Everyone's story is not the same. Everyone's brain injury is not the same. However, I do, I do believe that we need to change the narrative behind brain injury. And what I mean by that is the fact that, like more states, only 28 states have any federal funding, and it's not enough for community programs like the Brain Injury Alliance of Utah. They do resource facilitation because as, as we said, my brain injury took multiple years of recovery. And so once people passed that acute stage, they still need recovery quite often to be able to get back to being really efficient and comfortable independent adults. And so people need the opportunity.
Christina Brown Fisher:
What's the name of your nonprofit?
Jamie MoCrazy:
So we created the nonprofit MoCrazy Strong Foundation. And you can look at MoCrazyStrong.org.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Explain to me what is the whole that you want this foundation to fill?
Jamie MoCrazy:
So just changing the narrative. And with part of that, we know so many other brain injury survivors that have had wonderful recoveries, but they don't stay connected to brain injury if it doesn't define them. And there's such little understanding about it, even though so many individuals have brain injury, that you're not going to tell your boss you had a brain injury because they're going to think that you're not going to be able to execute at the level that they want you to or things like that. So people don't stay connected to it if they have had what society would deem as a successful recovery. So just raising awareness about the fact that you can have a recovery, that's one of the really important points of us. And we made the documentary, which we have gone to multiple different film festivals and we've won multiple awards.
Christina Brown Fisher:
You touched on this a little earlier, explain to me how you were able to get the rehabilitative care that you needed. Where did insurance stop and then where did these other programs step in? And how is that emblematic of the struggles that people with brain injuries might face just depending on where they live?
Jamie MoCrazy:
So that's a great question for my rehabilitative care. I actually was covered by Utah's Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation Fund, and at that time there were no financial constraints to who could be a recipient. So it wasn't like if you made under $100,000, you could be a recipient. Anybody could be a recipient to that, and they stepped in when insurance stepped out, because most insurance companies have a cap and they will fund about 30 sessions, which means that even if you're still making progress, they will cut you off. And so, then if you're cut off, you can't most people can't afford to still get rehabilitation services. And only 28 states have any form of ACL, which is the Association of Community Living. It's a federal grant, but it needs to be matched by your state. So your state needs to be putting up this amount of money. If they want ACL to put up this amount of money and only 28 states have that.
Christina Brown Fisher:
What you're saying as part of your advocacy, because my understanding is that you went to Capitol Hill with your documentary Mo Crazy Strong, to not only screen the documentary, but to raise awareness about this, someone who's on the path to recovery and right now we're talking about people who are insured, someone who is insured and on the path to recovery may get cut off after a certain number of treatments. And if you live in one of these 28 states, you are then fortunate enough to then have access to this fund that will then pay for the remaining treatments that you might need, which you're saying is critical to recovery, because basically you're paying upfront for someone to recover as opposed to paying on the back end, which could potentially mean a lifelong of disability payments.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yes, exactly.
Christina Brown Fisher:
How did you become aware of this and how did that awareness shift to advocacy?
Jamie MoCrazy:
I became aware, so my family, when I was leaving the hospital, that's how my mom found out about the rehabilitation fund. And during my therapy that's in the rehabilitation fund, that's when I had memory back. And I understood that the reason I could go five days a week was because I was a recipient of the fund, and I understood how important it was that I could graduate from outpatient therapy, not be cut off. And so that has has really stayed with me the whole time. And it's interesting because my my accident was in 2015, that's a little while ago. And that first year of rehabilitation when this idea got into my head, that was in 2016, which is a little while ago. But then I continued healing and I went back to college and I graduated college. And then right after I graduated college, my sister went through her different bouts of cancer and then she passed away. And so there was a lot going on, and we only established MoCrazy Strong Foundation as a nonprofit in September of 2022, which is just a year ago. And in September of 2022 is when we established we're Crazy strong foundation. And then February of 2023 was the first film festival that we had our global premiere for hashtag MoCrazy Strong. And we've since then, we've gotten into 15 different film festivals and like I mentioned, won multiple awards. One of them and just a couple of weeks ago at the Newport Beach Film Festival, we won Audience Award, which is really exciting with how our story resonates with the audience. And each film festival we've gone to, we've had such positive responses and people reaching out. And so in a way, I've had these ideas for many years, but I've just started actually being able to strategically bring these ideas to life.
Christina Brown Fisher:
I know, Jamie, that one of the things that you have talked about wanting to push back on is this perception of you that your recovery is, you know, one of a kind is miraculous, that your recovery is linked to the fact that you were a former elite athlete. It seems as though as part of the narrative that you talk about wanting to change is you want to shift this narrative that recovery from TBI or successful recovery from TBI can look like yours regardless of whether someone comes from this, like I said, elite athletic background. How do you do that? Because I think there's a lot of people that are going to listen to the story and say, Hmm, yeah, if I was someone who could compete at the Olympic level, then yeah, I could probably, you know, make a comeback. But but you're saying that that this level of recovery and success is is available to many people, provided that they have the appropriate resources.
Jamie MoCrazy:
And in a sense, like you said, my who I was before, my brain injury is different than who many people are before their brain injury. So who exactly I am after my brain injury is probably going to be different than who you are exactly after your brain injury. However, I do firmly believe that if given the resources and opportunity, anybody after a brain injury can get back to a life that they like to be living and contribute back to society in different formats. But the truth is, is that not everybody can have a recovery, that they have no disabilities that society would deem. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that if everybody takes in this MoCrazy method and uses those these different modalities for creating the narrative of their recovery, they can get back to feeling much more comfortable with who they are. And as you said, as you say, the truth is, is that you're not going to have exactly the same recovery that I had. But you can't use that as your excuse. And that's kind of what you were you were saying is that a lot of people are going to look at this story and be like, oh, yeah, well, I'm not her, so I can't do it. And that's not true. You can't use the excuse that because you haven't had this. And one of the things that we are going to keep working on is sharing even more stories about the individuals we worked on that did not have the background that I have. Did not have anything connected to what I have and the recoveries that they are making sometimes 20 years down the road. One of the ladies that is working on the curriculum right now is six classes taught by my mom and she is 20 years post her brain injury and she had no rehabilitation because nobody really understood that she had a brain injury. And she's making incredible changes to her life now. And her life before and after were very different from mine. But you can't use that as an excuse to why you cannot recover.
Christina Brown Fisher:
I read that you have a saying, Oh, wait we first have to talk about the name change MoCrazy method. First of all, what is the most crazy method? And for people who followed your career, they know you by another name. So let's talk a little bit about that.
Jamie MoCrazy:
So, MoCrazy method is a program that is virtual and you can do it from any state in the U.S. and it's led by my mom, who had a lot of education about the brain before my brain injury, and she's now a Ph.D. candidate on Mind-Body Medicine because she went back to get her Ph.D. in peer reviewed research that shared why what she did for me would work for you and so the MoCrazy Method, she teaches it every other Friday, and you can look it up on our website and more information about it and register for it if you would like. And so about the name change. MoCrazy had been my nickname.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Well, first of all, tell us. Tell us your maiden name. Tell us the name that people following your career would know you by.
Jamie MoCrazy:
So my birth name is Jamie Crane Mauzy, and my nickname for my whole life had been MoCrazy. So starting when I was a little child, my mom would call me her little MoCrazy because I was always daredevil and I was always jumping on trampolines and flipping. And I love to do that. So I was her MoCrazy. And then Crane Mauzy, the Mauzy is French, so it's Mauzy and a lot of people mispronounce it. And the announcers would say, "Jamie Crane Mauzy, the MoCrazy is now on course," when I would do all my competitive stuff. And so I was kind of known as the MoCrazy and my little sister was actually she still competes in half pipe skiing the same sister who watched my accident. Her name is Jeanie and she was known by as Tiny MoCrazy. And she's actually four inches taller than me. So she's not Tiny MoCrazy anymore. But she was known as that when she got onto the competition sceene because I was MoCrazy and she was Tiny MoCrazy.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And she was Tiny MoCrazy, I love it, and then the MoCrazy method is this modality of care that your mother developed as part of your rehabilitation process. Your mother, who is an early childhood brain specialist, is that right? Early childhood.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, she studied early childhood brain development.
Christina Brown Fisher:
I read that she mandated that you relearn algebra following your brain injury because she wanted you to develop the critical thinking skills. Is that right?
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yep, yup, that is right.
Christina Brown Fisher:
Oh, I would have been mad at my mom if she made me do that.
Jamie MoCrazy:
Yeah, that was part of the first two years and I did get mad at my mom a couple of times and every time I got mad at her, she would ask me "why, why was she making me do this?" And every time she'd ask me, I would say, "Because you love me. And you know, it's the thing I need to do it." But there were there were many times the first couple of years that I got really frustrated. She would also cause the right side of my body had been paralyzed due to brainstem damage, and so when I was at the house and I couldn't hold anything with my right hand without my hand shaking for a period of time, and instead of being like, "Oh, well, just hold it in your left hand," she would give me a glass of water and make me hold it in my weak hand. And I would shake and it would spill on the floor and I would be super frustrated and embarrassed. I was a 20, I was a 23-year-old and I couldn't hold a glass of water. That's really depressing. And so she would make me make me fail. She would make me do it because if I had not spilled all that water in the kitchen, I would not have been able to now hold a glass of water without any hand traumas at all. And she was also smart about it. You know, she wouldn't give me tomato juice on top of a white couch. She would give me water in the kitchen like you do with little kids. So when I spilled it, it was fine. But then the issue when you are having a brain injury, you have to develop a lot of things you do as kids. But if you're a three year old and you spill your water in the kitchen, you don't think anything of it and nobody else thinks anything of it. But if you're a 23-year-old and you can't hold water in the kitchen, you're really embarrassed.
Christina Brown Fisher:
And demoralized, yeah.
Jamie MoCrazy:
That's one of the big things that happens with brain injury recovery is people are so afraid to embarrass themselves that they don't push themselves.
Christina Brown Fisher:
My guest --- Jamie MoCrazy --- elite athlete, champion skier, traumatic brain injury survivor and now brain health advocate. Her award-winning film MoCrazy Strong documents the story of her career ending fall and the extraordinary journey of recovery. To find out more information about her organization, the MoCrazy Foundation, Jamie’s documentary, or how you can get involved in adaptive sports, following brain injury, just check out the show notes. I am Christina Brown Fisher and thank you so much for tuning into Me, Myself and TBI.