Spring Break
Rams track, field member on road to recovery after accident
Brandon Gearing
Issue date: 2/19/09 Section: Sports
02/19/09 - Three months after University of Rhode Island junior Kimly May lost control of his Audi and slammed into a utility pole, the URI track member and Chi Phi Fraternity brother is on his way to recovery, still struggling with the injuries that nearly took his life.
May, the car's only occupant that night in early November, was traveling on South Pier Road at the time of the accident. Medical personnel on the scene immediately rushed him to Rhode Island Hospital and placed him in the intensive care unit.
Suffering from severe head trauma, a collapsed lung and internal bleeding, doctors had feared the worst for May.
"Overall, it's a big improvement from three months ago," Sina May, Kimly's sister, said about his recovery.
Sina said she's kept nearly 800 friends and family up-to-date on Kimly's condition through his group on Facebook.
Kimly has since been transferred from Rhode Island Hospital to a hospital closer to his hometown in Haverstraw, N.Y., and is still on a dialysis machine. He was originally placed on three blood pressure medications that affected his kidneys, forcing him to be placed on dialysis.
Kimly is also struggling from severe nausea that has not allowed him to keep solid food down. He has been fed through a feeding tube and will continue to do so until his stomach improves.
His collapsed lung has begun functioning once again, a positive sign for a man who doctors thought might not make it.
The brain swelling has hampered Kimly's ability to recognize friends and family in pictures, but according to Sina, his memory has continued to improve daily.
In order to see how just much of his swollen brain he is able to utilize, Sina said she has been giving him math problems to solve.
"I started off with some simple addition, then multiplication and division, then finding the square root of a number. It didn't seem like much of a challenge to him, so I gave him algebra to do and he solved the problems without any mistakes or hesitation," she said.
May, the car's only occupant that night in early November, was traveling on South Pier Road at the time of the accident. Medical personnel on the scene immediately rushed him to Rhode Island Hospital and placed him in the intensive care unit.
Suffering from severe head trauma, a collapsed lung and internal bleeding, doctors had feared the worst for May.
"Overall, it's a big improvement from three months ago," Sina May, Kimly's sister, said about his recovery.
Sina said she's kept nearly 800 friends and family up-to-date on Kimly's condition through his group on Facebook.
Kimly has since been transferred from Rhode Island Hospital to a hospital closer to his hometown in Haverstraw, N.Y., and is still on a dialysis machine. He was originally placed on three blood pressure medications that affected his kidneys, forcing him to be placed on dialysis.
Kimly is also struggling from severe nausea that has not allowed him to keep solid food down. He has been fed through a feeding tube and will continue to do so until his stomach improves.
His collapsed lung has begun functioning once again, a positive sign for a man who doctors thought might not make it.
The brain swelling has hampered Kimly's ability to recognize friends and family in pictures, but according to Sina, his memory has continued to improve daily.
In order to see how just much of his swollen brain he is able to utilize, Sina said she has been giving him math problems to solve.
"I started off with some simple addition, then multiplication and division, then finding the square root of a number. It didn't seem like much of a challenge to him, so I gave him algebra to do and he solved the problems without any mistakes or hesitation," she said.
