A young California man is sharing his story and raising awareness of an extremely rare diagnosis stemming from a freak surfing accident at Hawaii’s Waikiki Beach.
Back in 2021, Brandon Louie, a native of Los Altos in Santa Clara County, was enjoying the waves at Waikiki like any other surfer and says he caught about half-a-dozen waves before feeling a sharp pain as he rode the last one in.
Louie said he felt a pop in his lower back followed by a shooting pain up his spine and down his legs; he swam in and laid down on the beach as the pain worsened.
“I would say I laid down for no more than 10 minutes, when the pain kept getting worse and worse, then just disappeared completely,” he told KTLA sister station KHON2. “Along with it, all the feeling and movement in my legs.”
Louie was rushed to the Queens Medical Center in Honolulu where, after numerous tests, doctors diagnosed him with surfer’s myelopathy, meaning he was paralyzed.
It’s an extremely rare condition; Queens Medical Center only knows of fewer than 70 cases ever.
“When someone’s laying down on the board, and they come up, their back extends first, and that extension of the spine causes compression, which limits the blood flow to the area where that compression is pinpointed at, and that will lead to a spinal cord injury,” said spinal cord physical therapy specialist Chris Ready, who treated Louie at the Shepard Center in Atlanta after a month in the hospital.
“Balance looks very different,” Ready added. “They’re having to learn to move themselves in bed again, how to get out of bed, into the shower, and different things like that, so they’re kind of learning all those basic like activities of daily living over again, and how to do it without use of their legs.”
Throughout the process, Louie explained that he sometimes felt hopeless, but quickly came to understand that facing challenges was a natural part of life.
“There was a time for sure that I felt pretty down and very negative, but I realized very quickly that it’s not productive,” said Louie. “It’s not healthy, and it’s not going to help you overcome the challenges that you’re facing. And the challenges you’re facing just aren’t going to go away either.”
Since his grandma grew up in the Honolulu neighborhood of Kaimuki, Louie has been visiting Hawaii since he was a child. Since his life-changing injury, that has not changed.
“I really enjoy hikes, when accessible. I love the beach. Just going for swims, looking for fish under the water. That’s always fun,” he said. “It’s not about where it happened. It’s not about why it happened. It just happened here so I still love the island.”
Brandon now plays on the University of Arizona wheelchair basketball team, pursuing a business degree, and is eventually looking to go to law school.
“If you spend all the time worrying about the things that are out of your control, then you’re not really going to get anywhere,” he said. “If I just sat I the hospital worrying about what I couldn’t do anymore, then I wouldn’t know what I can do now.”