Editor’s note: This is the second of a three-part series detailing the story of Bryan Hooyman, freshman in pre-journalism and mass communication, who is returning as a student at Iowa State after an automobile accident in November 2002 that caused severe injury.

Artifacts from Bryan Hooyman’s old life are scattered around his apartment at 300 Stanton Ave.

On the floor by the door: a pair of basketball shoes.

In the bag under the table: a bowling ball.

Squeezed between some movies in the movie rack: two baseballs.

On the cabinet by his bed: a football.

Bryan was a sports enthusiast before the accident. Because of the accident, he would never be able to play certain sports again.

“I get one more hard hit to my head, I pop over dead,” Bryan said.

The left side of his body was paralyzed immediately after the accident and he suffered some brain damage. Soon after he awoke from his coma, he was prescribed Paxil, an antidepressant.

“Brain injury tends to get you depressed, because it screws up all the chromosomes in your brain,” he said. “If I don’t take [Paxil] every day, then you will definitely see. That’s when you will see me moping around saying, ‘Oh well, I might as well go eat worms.'”

Joe, Bryan’s dad, said Bryan had to be put on several medications while he was in the hospital.

“He had medicine to prevent seizure, medicine to control his bladder and medicine for hallucinating,” Joe said. “He was imagining things that weren’t there.”

Joe remembers one particular period that was difficult to control.

“He had to be kept in a padded room because he would bite anyone that came in,” Joe said. “He doesn’t remember any of this.”

Memory loss was another problem Bryan had to overcome. He spent about a month at Iowa Methodist Medical Center in Des Moines before being transferred to Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo, where his dad worked at the time. Bryan was there for about two-and-a-half months, and checked out on Valentine’s Day.

Bryan said he went through about six months of outpatient therapy, which included physical therapy, speech therapy and occupational therapy that was specifically focused on his future profession.

“My whole left side was paralyzed for almost a month. My left shoulder was even knocked out of its socket. I couldn’t really do any rehab on my left side. That’s why my right side is so much stronger,” Bryan said. “It’s like [the Incredible] Hulk over here, and this one’s like Pee-wee Herman.”

Physical injuries weren’t all he had to deal with. There were injuries sustained from the accident that no one could see that also needed healing.

The accident strained the relationship he had with his girlfriend at the time, Morgan Brown, now a senior in meteorology. Soon after the accident, Bryan broke up with her.

“Not being able to see her, not being able to drive and see her all that much, the restrictions on being able to call her and all that stuff was just getting to me. I just didn’t want . ” He paused as he struggled for an explanation. “I just didn’t want to have her hanging on and all that stuff.”

The two met at a party when Bryan was a junior in high school.

“He will call me every now and then. It was interesting. One time, he would call and he will be really excited and almost exactly the way he used to be, and then two hours later he will call me, and he wouldn’t remember that he had called me two hours previously, and he would seem a little bit more depressed, a little bit more reserved, kind of like, ‘This sucks,'” Brown said.

Eventually, the relationship came to an end.

“He said that he basically didn’t want to have a girlfriend. He had told me originally that, ‘When I get better, I will come find you,’ and he called me a couple of weeks later and ended it,” Brown said.

In Bryan’s apartment are other clues of his old self, which he hasn’t let the accident take away. One thing that hasn’t changed is his love of the Minnesota Vikings.

Purple dishwashing fluid, purple plates, a closet full of Vikings jerseys and a Minnesota Viking X-box controller – his collection of Vikings paraphernalia consumes his home.

“He loved to play baseball and football, and he loved the Vikings,” said Dennis Girsch, senior in hotel, restaurant and institution management who has been Bryan’s friend since 8th grade.