16-year-old Rueben Nsemoh has goals of becoming a professional soccer player when he’s older. He plays constantly, enduring injuries and two concussions, to continue pursuing his goal.
In late September, as Nsemoh played goalie for an elite national team, he got kicked violently in the head as he dove for a ball.
It was his third concussion, and his worst to date.
Nsemoh’s coach, Bruno Kalonji, feared for the teen’s life. “He stopped breathing several times,” Kalonji recalled, “and he’d start throwing up. It was a sequence of things I'd never seen before.
“You thought you'd might lose him. I thought I might lose him there,” he added.
Immediately after the accident, Nsemoh was airlifted to Atlanta Medical Center to receive emergency medical assistance. He spent the next three days floating in and out of his coma.
Nsemoh finally woke up, much to his parents’ relief, but realized he couldn’t speak a word of English.
The words that came out of his mouth when he tried to communicate were only in Spanish, even though Nsemoh had only known a couple words before the accident and his family didn’t speak Spanish at all.
“It started flowing out,” Nsemoh explained later, after he regained some of his English-speaking abilities with the help of a speech therapist. “I felt like it was like second nature for me. I wasn’t speaking my English right, and every time I tried to speak it I would have a seizure.”
Now, a month later, Nsemoh has been able to return home to his family – but is not able to go to school, much less play soccer, because his doctors still aren’t certain how much Nsemoh’s brain was damaged by that kick.
Nsemoh admits he doesn’t really remember anything from the game, and even as he sits at home watching soccer matches on TV, he confesses that he zones out a lot. “Sometimes, I daze out. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not there…but I am,” he said.
The Nsemoh family’s entire life has changed because of this, Nsemoh’s mother, Dorah, said. The family is now struggling under mounting hospital bills and are hoping to receive financial support from people online.
Please support the family if you can, and watch the original news clip of Nsemoh’s story here:
