Nearly a year after his near-fatal accident on Interstate 89, Adam Dansiger '00 is continuing to defy the doctors who, in the hours after he was thrown from his sports utility vehicle, predicted he would not survive -- let alone recover from -- his injuries.
Dansiger said he will hopefully return to the College as a student in January, and he is looking forward to seeing the doctors who treated him while he was a patient in Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center's Intensive Care Unit.
"[I want to] thank them for what they've done for me," he said.
Dansiger said he has "cognitively made a lot of progress" this summer, and can now walk for short periods of time without the assistance of a cane.
He said he avoids walking alone on hard surfaces where he could fall and be injured, but walks without his cane inside his house and in JFK Hartwyck at Oaktree Nursing, Convalescent and Rehabilitation Center, where he is undergoing rehabilitation and physical therapy and is a member of a memory group and an initiative group.
Dansiger has had "all sorts of memory problems" since his accident. Although he can remember things that are important to him, he has problems recalling details, such as where he has left his car keys.
He said his memory and balance were improving until about two months ago, when he hit "a brick wall."
In his memory group, Dansiger practices mental manipulation and list learning, exercises that may help him when he returns to Dartmouth as a full time student.
Dansiger said he hopes there is a "surgery out there" that will help to improve the vision in his right eye. He said his right eyeball and leg are a little off center, and he can "see very, very little" with the eye.
Dansiger, an outpatient at Hartwyck at Oaktree, attends therapy five days each week. He said he spends his time away from the rehabilitation center watching television or in the gym, where he works out five times a week.
Dansiger said his parents, his friends at Cornell and the University of Virginia and his sister, Ruth, have been supportive during his recovery, but his brothers in Phi Delta Alpha fraternity have not called him.
"I'm sincerely disappointed," he said.
