PORT ARTHUR, Texas — Doctors doubted him but four months after Noah Jackson suffered a traumatic brain injury, health professionals are calling him a walking miracle.
The 16-year-old Port Neches-Groves sophomore spent 40 days in the hospital after being seriously injured during a JV football game. At first, doctors were not sure Jackson would survive.
The teen is undergoing physical therapy at South County Physical Therapy in Port Arthur.
“You just can’t sit around and be sorry for yourself,” Jackson said. "You got to get up and do something about it, be better than you were the day before."
Jackson had to undergo emergency brain surgery after the October of 2021 injury. He was fighting for his life while in a medically induced coma.
“It’s hard when you see your child laying there on life support, and you hear the machine, and you’re looking and you realize, it's going at the same rate his chest is, because that’s the machine breathing not him breathing, and it's hard to see that,” Kim Borne, Jackson’s mother, said.
Eventually, Jackson was taken off the ventilator. Doctors are amazed with the progress he has made.
“Miraculous, prayers answered because he had a hard time skipping when he first came in," Dr. Mark Culver, director of physical therapy at South County Physical Therapy said. "He was tight. He was uncoordinated."
The teen is lifting, jumping and crawling his way back to being his old self. The teen said he has been changed not just physically but also emotionally.
Jackson said the unexpected injury, in some ways, has actually changed his life for the better.
“It's changed my life in every single aspect possible really,” Jackson said. “I just, I love people more. I care for people. I feel for people. I feel people's pain.”
Jackson has a new found appreciation for the person who has been there for him every step of the way, his mother.
“It makes me appreciate everything she does for me so much more,” Jackson said. “I really don’t know what to say. The only thing I can really tell you is how grateful I am. That’s all I could really do.”
The teen has a few more weeks of physical therapy, and then he will be able to start working out on his own. Jackson is working hard and relearning the basics.
“I can’t stress how much, how grateful I am,” Jackson said. “That’s really the main thing. You got to live life every day, because you never know when it could be your last. You got to show everybody love, you got to. You got to tell that person you love them, cause that might be the last time that you seem them.”
Although his days of playing football are over, Jackson said he will be on the sidelines cheering his team on every Friday night.