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A long way down, and back

With help from his family and friends, an 18-year-old tries to regain the life he had before his two-story plunge.

By JOSE CARDENAS, Times Staff Writer
Published September 18, 2007

Corey Felty gets a visit from family friend Irene Tsotopoulous and Kathy Harmon, hugging Corey, at HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Largo Friday.
	[Times photo: Ted McLaren]

Corey Felty graduated from Countryside High School in May, and he planned to start classes at St. Petersburg College this fall.

Instead, the 18-year-old came out of a monthlong coma on Aug. 16. He can't eat or walk without help.

At HealthSouth Rehabilitation Hospital in Largo, Felty is recovering from brain injuries he suffered on July 14.

That's the night he and some other young people went to a house party in Ozona.

He jumped from a second-floor landing, meaning to land in the pool.

But he missed, crashing feet-first onto the concrete below.

"I don't remember the accident," he said recently, sitting in a wheelchair at the hospital.

The fact that he didn't dive, his mom says, probably saved his life.

* * *

Felty lived with his mother, Ginny Felty, in Clearwater.

With high school behind him and a wide-open summer ahead, he told his mother he was going swimming at "Justin's" house.

Felty went to 196 Shore Drive, a vacant house owned by Justin Finnerty's family, who lived down the street in another house.

Finnerty's parents and his younger siblings were on vacation in Europe, said his mother, Yolanda Trlin.

Finnerty said some teenagers brought alcohol to his get-together on their own, and he didn't see the accident because he was in the house. He said he heard that at least one other person successfully jumped into the pool.

Felty "decided to jump off like a landing area ... and did not make it," said Finnerty.

Just past midnight, Pinellas County sheriff's deputies went to the house.

A girl at the party used Felty's cell phone to call his mother. A Palm Harbor Fire Rescue paramedic got on the phone. He told Ginny Felty that her son was not responding.

"I started screaming and crying," she said. "It's the call you never want to get."

A helicopter flew Corey to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg, where he stayed for 40 days.

At the party, deputies arrested Finnerty, 18, on misdemeanor charges of underage possession of alcohol and hosting an open house party. His arraignment on both charges is scheduled for Sept. 24.

Doctors at Bayfront did not test to see if Felty was drinking alcohol that night, his mother said. Corey told her he probably was.

Felty lay unconscious with tubes in his body, reminding his mother of Terri Schiavo.

Doctors determined he suffered a traumatic brain injury, contusions of the frontal lobe and bruising of the brain stem, she said.

He opened his eyes in mid August but did not speak, she said. He just stared.

Then, on Aug. 16, Ginny Felty came to visit Corey. There was a blanket falling off his legs.

"Do you want me to put it on?" she asked.

To her surprise, he said, "Yes."

"I started crying," she said. "It was a miracle."

When he awoke, "everything hurt," he said. "When I was in a coma, I had a dream that I was in the Keys, fishing."

Friends from school visit Felty at HealthSouth.

"We all hope you get better and be safe," reads a message posted on the wall beneath a picture of a group of friends from Countryside High dubbed "The Locker Crew."

Finnerty said he did not know Felty well before the accident and has gone to HealthSouth once, but Corey was asleep. Finnerty plans to visit him again.

"He calls me on the phone to talk to me and stuff," said Finnerty, who attends St. Petersburg College in Tarpon Springs.

"It's really sad what happened," Finnerty said. "I wish he didn't have to go through all this, myself, my parents. I'm glad he's awake."

* * *

While he was in the coma, Ginny Felty did not know whether her son would walk or talk again. Now he talks, though she said he has a child-like demeanor, and is making progress at HealthSouth. Still, she is trying to get Medicaid for him so he can stay on at HealthSouth. She said her insurance company, BlueCross BlueShield of Florida, wants to transfer Corey to a nursing home.

"As a mom, you want the best for your kid and the best opportunity to bring him back to where he was before," said Felty, 52. "My mother is in a nursing home. They are not geared for young injured patients."

Unlike a nursing home, HealthSouth is a hospital, said Martin O'Neil, the facility's marketing director.

Corey's day is full of therapies geared at rehabilitating someone with a traumatic brain injury, O'Neil said.

Among other things, he is learning how to swallow, speak and walk again. He is regaining his cognition.

And though he doesn't remember what happened to him, he does know one thing.

"I'm a lucky kid," he says.

Jose Cardenas can be reached at 727 445-4224 or jcardenas@sptimes.com.

[Last modified September 17, 2007, 20:25:56]