Help George raise money

Hi and thank you for visiting my fundraising page!

My name is George Farrington and I am so Proud to be a member of this year’s BIA-MA team for the Falmouth Road Race.  As a brain injury survivor myself, I’m also Proud of the fact that I am even running in the race. 

                        My journey with brain injury has been going on for a little more than 9 years now, it has been anything but smooth, and it all started with a headache.  I had been having daily headaches for close to a year.  “It’s just the stress from work.”, is what I told myself every day.  I had bottles of Motrin stashed everywhere…my car, my office, my nightstand, my briefcase.  I was never more than just a few feet from a bottle at any given time.  I finally told my wife about the headaches; she made me make a doctor’s appointment. After a few months of waiting, I got an appointment with a neurologist on Friday March 13, 2015.  The doctor was very nice and told me that I was probably experiencing migraines, but that he was going to order imaging to be on the safe side.  He told my wife Robin and I that with getting approval from the insurance company, it would probably be a few weeks before I went in for the MRI, which we understood.  On Sunday March 15^th I ended up in the Emergency Room with the worst headache I’ve ever had in my life. On Tuesday March 17^th…St. Patrick’s Day… the doctors came into my hospital room and told me, Robin and my father that I had a brain tumor.  Eight days later, on March 25^th I went in for brain surgery.

                        You never really understand the meaning of the phrase “life can change in an instant” until it really happens.  I was 39 years old, and I had the American dream.  Robin and I have two kids. The oldest was 7 years old at the time, and our youngest was just 13 months old.  We had just bought the house we intended to turn into our home, and I had just gotten a fantastic new job.  Now I was in jeopardy of losing it all.  I had a golf ball sized hemangioblastoma on the left side of my cerebellum, and to remove the tumor, the surgeons had to remove a large piece of the left side of my cerebellum.  

Amazingly I Walked out of the hospital a little more than 30 hours after brain surgery.  I was driving 10 days post op, was back to work part time 27 days post op, was back to work full time 45 days post op, and after 72 days I was finally allowed to pick up something heavier than a gallon of milk…so I joined a crossfit gym.  Thankfully, the tumor turned out to be benign, but things weren’t right.  I was excessively tired, never mind trying to read emails… I couldn’t even read “The wheels on the Bus” to our little one.  Driving was not only becoming a challenge, but it was also becoming dangerous. Mistakes were being made at work.  I tried chalking it up to the fact I just had brain surgery, however my local doctors disagreed and sent me to a doctor at MGH who is the world’s authority on the cerebellum.

The appointment lasted a little longer than an hour, and in that time, I got a diagnosis.  I was diagnosed with Cognitive Cerebellar Affective Syndrome (CCAS).  To be perfectly honest, I was just happy to hear that I wasn’t going crazy, and to have diagnosis.  I didn’t really understand what it meant.  I just asked if they could make me “better”.  The response I got was that “we will get you as close to baseline as possible, however the therapy is going to be long, difficult and extensive”.  My response back to the doctor was that “you will NEVER find anyone who is going to out work me”.  With that therapy began.

Cognitive therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, vestibular therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, suddenly, I became a professional patient.  I scheduled everything to be on one day.  So, every Tuesday, someone would drive me to MGH for 9am and my day wouldn’t get done until 4.  I was exhausted.  It would take me days to recover from going to therapy all day.  I didn’t understand, so I called my doctor and told him my concerns.  That’s when he told me something that rocked me every bit as much as hearing that I had a brain tumor.  He told me that I was now disabled.  I asked him how long I was going to be disabled for…he just said, “the rest of your life”.  I remember crying in my car for 15 minutes, before I could even call Robin.

It wasn’t long after that that the career I had worked so hard to build ended abruptly.  Fortunately, my boss was kind enough to lay me off so that I could collect unemployment while I applied for disability.  It doesn’t work that way though.  You can’t apply for disability while receiving unemployment benefits, and once those run out, you must be out of work for 5 months without receiving any compensation before you can even apply.  We had just gone from a two-income family to a one-income family, with all the regular bills a family of four has Plus, all the medical bills that were now coming in faster than we could open them.   Even with the help of a lawyer it was 18 months before I received my first disability check.  Robin walked into our room, and she was crying.  When I asked her what was wrong, she simply replied “your check came”.  I began crying myself.

The odd thing about it all is no one ever told me what my disability was.  To be fair, I didn’t really ask either, I just knew that I couldn’t get out of my own way.  I always seemed confused, I stuttered, and couldn’t find words.  Then there were the balance issues and the falls.  I can’t tell you for sure just how long it was after my surgery, but I am guessing at least a year, that was the first time I had ever even heard the term brain injury.  In my life.  Sure, I had heard of a concussion, and I knew that part of my brain was removed but, what the hell is brain injury?  We never really got any type of explanation or resources from any of the doctors, so Robin and I began to research brain injury on our own.  The problem for me was depression, and the sense of being alone had begun to set in.  I had No idea who I was anymore.  I looked like me, I sounded like me…sort of…but I wasn’t Me.

Robin began to suggest that I attend a support group.  “A support group for what?” I would say to her.  Or that I wasn’t about to go anywhere that I had to try and explain what was going on with me, because “No one is going to understand or get it”.  Thankfully Robin would not relent.  So finally, I agreed to go to a support group meeting.  Not because I wanted to go, but because I told her I’d try it once in the hopes of just getting her to leave me alone about it.  She had found a support group that was organized by the Brain Injury Association of Massachusetts (BIA-MA) that we would attend at a church in Worcester.  It was a very stormy summer night the of the support group.  Only one other survivor made it to the meeting.  But he was all I needed.  He introduced himself and told his story and began to list off the symptoms he was still having Years after his injury took place.  I really was looking for cameras because I thought I was on “This is Your Life” or something like that.  But that is when it dawned on me…” I’m not alone”.

I attended several more support groups, and eventually became a member of the New Start Brain Injury Community Center in Worcester. And that is when I made one of the best decisions of my life.  You see immediately after my surgery I knew that I wanted to be an advocate and help raise funds for the brain tumor community.  Now I added becoming an advocate and fundraiser for the brain injury community as well.  Back in 2019 I had the opportunity to be part of a round table discussion at New Start, and soon after I was asked to speak at Brain Injury Awareness and Advocacy Day at the state house that was being organized by the BIA-MA.  I leapt at the opportunity!  We there advocating for the Cognitive Rehab bill.  I was told that I should keep my talk to about 5-6 minutes.  I am still humbled and proud of the fact that after Reading the 15-minute-long speech, that I Wrote…I received a standing ovation.  The BIA-MA and I never looked back from there.

Over the years, I have been part of several advocating campaigns, and have done Facebook fundraisers for the BIA-MA, as well as participating in their Cerebration Walk Roll and Run.  I’m the facilitator of a support group myself now, which is one of the more rewarding things that I do through my advocacy work.  I sit on the state’s Brain Injury Council alongside several members of the BIA-MA team.  And yes, I am STILL advocating with the BIA-MA for the Cognitive Rehab Bill.

Now it is time to try something new and challenge myself.  So, this year I applied for a bib to be part of team BIA-MA for the Falmouth Road Race and my application was accepted.  I have done walks and I have done virtual 5k’s but never a true road race.  This race will challenge me more than anything that I have attempted thus far on my journey.

Obviously, my objective is to raise both funds and awareness for the BIA-MA and brain injury in general.  But this will challenge me personally like nothing I have ever done before.  You see not only was I on loftstran crutches for almost 3 years because of the constant falls.  Through relentless physical therapy, I was able to throw those damn things in a dumpster!  However, the falls continue to happen.  Just a couple weeks before thanksgiving 2023, I fell fracturing my ankle and my fibula.   I’m still recovering from that if you can believe it, so that is bringing an added challenge to this race.  Also, since my surgery, my vision hasn’t been all that great.  Things crossing my path as I walk can cause me to get dizzy and fall, so you can imagine the challenge that I am going to have navigating through 11,199 of my new closest friends.

That is the point though.  If I don’t/didn’t continually challenge myself, I would not be where I am today.  So yes, I am running this race for me…it’s going to be my 7.2 mile two fingers up tour to both brain injury and brain tumors.  It is also my 7.2 mile Victory lap for All that I have achieved, and All that I have left to accomplish.  It is also a way that I am going to try and give back to the BIA-MA for all that they have done, not just for me, but for brain injury survivors and their families.

To make things a bit more challenging, and a way to hopefully benefit the BIA-MA, I am setting a 3 tiered fundraising goal for myself.

Goal 1: Raise $3000.  The reason I set my initial goal at $3000 is because this will be the 3 race/walk that I have done

Goal 2:  If I can meet my 1^st goal, my next goal will be $7,200.  Why $7, 200?  Because the race is 7.2 miles long

Goal 3: If I can meet my first 2 goals, my final goal will be to exceed $9,000, even if only by a few bucks.  The reason for 9 plus thousand dollars…. Because I am a 9 year and counting survivor.

Over the years you have all been so wonderful in helping me raise money for my various causes.  I understand that times are tougher now than they ever have been…at least in my lifetime.  However, every little bit helps.  Even if you can’t donate yourself, if you can share my story and my fundraising page.  Share it with your friends and family, share it with your employer and community.  Because brain injury doesn’t discriminate.  From concussions, to strokes, car accidents, and yes brain tumors, life can change in an instant.  I know.  My family and I are living proof.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this.  Thank you for sharing my story and fundraising page.  Thank you for your donations.  Thank you for helping me reach my fundraising goals.  Most importantly of them all, Thank you for all your support over the last 9 plus years.  Thank you for reading my posts and taking the time to learn a little more about brain injury.  

Thank you all again, and I just have one last message for you all……Get your cow bells ready!  More cow bell… we need more cow bell!!!!