A FIGHTING SPIRIT
Healing from traumatic brain injury, teacher-triathlete will swim in AHN fundraiser
Megan Kruth still doesn’t know what sent her flying over her bike’s handlebars on Aug. 4, 2013. The Ironman triathlete and 17-time All-America collegiate swimmer had done training rides on that stretch of Babcock Boulevard near her McCandless townhouse hundreds of times. But that Sunday morning, she probably hit a bump in the pavement. When her helmet struck the pavement, it split open like a too-ripe watermelon. The impact fractured her skull, ribs and collarbone.
By the time her ambulance pulled into Allegheny General Hospital, she was in a coma. Doctors weren’t sure she’d survive the surgery to remove a bone flap from the skull to expose the brain and relieve building pressure.
But neurosurgeon Khalid Aziz says that the then-41-yearold had several things working in her favor: the quickness with which the paramedics got her to the hospital, her youth and her extremely good health.
“But I also believe it was her spirit,” he says. “You could just see she wanted to get better.”
Ms. Kruth would have to relearn how to swallow, talk and walk in the months of difficult rehab that followed. But no one doubted she’d fight her way back, says her younger sister Erin Kruth of Dallas. “There has never been anything that Meg didn’t do because it was too hard.”
With the support of many doctors and nurses, family and the triathlete community, “Iron Meg” has been able to return to not just swimming, but also competing. On Saturday, she’ll participate in Race for the Conch Eco-Seaswim, a 2.4-mile swim in the Atlantic Ocean at the Turks and Caicos. This would be on the 1,427th day since her accident.
The 44-year-old long-time second-grade teacher at PineRichland School District’s Hance Elementary School is using it as an opportunity to help others who’ve suffered a traumatic brain injury, as a fundraiser for Allegheny Health Network Neuroscience Institute (https://swim-withmegan. megan-s-fundraiser).
She says, “Goal-setting has brought me back to what I love.”
Slow and steady
After her initial surgery, Ms. Kruth wound up needing four more cranial surgeries over the next year, including one to place a customized synthetic implant in her head after the first bone flap became infected. (“But I can go through scanners with no problems!” she quips.) Her broken collarbone, repaired with a titanium plate, required another majoroperation.
While she hated the white