Jason and Monica in 1999, five years before Jason's brain injury
At age 34, Jason Crigler was a rising star in New York City's East Village music scene. He was awaiting his first CD release and expecting a new baby with his wife, Monica. Meanwhile, he had plenty of gigs, both as a backup guitarist for such popular performers as John Cale, Marshall Crenshaw and Linda Thompson and as a performer in his own right. It was during one of these latter shows in the summer of 2004 that Jason abruptly fled the stage in pain and confusion. Later, in the emergency room, Monica and the rest of the couple's family learned the awful truth: The young, healthy musician had suffered a life-threatening brain hemorrhage. In the opinion of the doctors, even if Jason made it through the night, he would remain in a vegetative state.
In the face of this daunting medical pronouncement, and after Jason did make it through the night, Monica and the Crigler clan took a courageous decision — they would believe in Jason and, joining forces, conduct an intensive, round-the-clock care and rehabilitation program to bring him back to the life they believed was still in him. As poignantly documented in the new documentary Life. Support. Music., by Jason's friend, filmmaker Eric Daniel Metzgar (The Chances of the World Changing, POV 2007), the Crigler family didn't just confound the doctors and conventional wisdom about what can be accomplished for brain-damaged people — they even astounded themselves.
"I was whisked away in an ambulance and that's the last thing I remember for a year and a half" is the way Jason remembers the ordeal portrayed in Life. Support. Music. But for Monica (who would give birth to a girl, Ellie, during that time) and the couple's families — the Criglers and, on Monica's side, the Cohens — it was a time of intense activity, tight schedules, setbacks, constant worry and dedicated optimism in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Friends also lent a hand, and musicians Norah Jones, Crenshaw, Thompson and others held benefits. But nothing could replace the collective effort at extended, round-the-clock rehabilitation — which few brain-damage victims can have — provided by Jason's extended family.
What amazes is not just the effort the family mounted, but their unwavering belief in Jason's full recovery. "Scientifically, he wasn't there," says Dr. Christopher Carter, who treated Jason. But the family always believed he was there.
Weaving early footage shot by the staff of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston showing Jason's first excruciatingly slow steps at rehabilitation and home movies taken after he came home with the agonized reflections of Jason's family, doctors and friends, Metzgar has crafted a painful yet poetic account of his friend's return from nowhere. If anything, the early footage seems to confirm the doctors' expectations — Jason looks mentally absent, with serious motor-function impairments.
When Jason was at Spaulding, the family arranged to visit him daily to supplement the staff's efforts. Upon his release — and against the advice of some specialists — the family decided to care for him at home in Cambridge, Mass., near his wife's parents' residence, rather than place him in a nursing facility. At that point, the $1 million cap on Jason's medical insurance had been reached, and while the family awaited a decision on a pending Medicaid application, they were essentially on their own in providing for his care.
Once Jason got home — the point at which most brain-damaged people are considered to have recovered as much as they are able — the family continued their constant rounds of care, rehabilitation and stimulation. Progress was slow and set-backs were devastating, yet the family's optimism shines through in the film. The moment Jason picked up a guitar and began to play again was the milestone that seemed to validate the family's faith. For Jason, it was both a thrilling and bittersweet return to music. "I had trouble connecting," he says in the film.
Then, at Jason's first concert in New York after his injury, something clicked and he suddenly connected with the music. "It's the first gig I played that I felt really good," he later said. That was the moment, a year and a half after his brain hemorrhage, when things turned around.
At an extraordinary get-together afterwards, the family members recall the journey they have taken together with some degree of astonishment as well as quiet relief. Though they allow that Jason might be 90% recovered, and that the effort to achieve full recovery will continue, they realize their collective effort has succeeded against all odds — and transformed their own ideas of family and faith.
"I knew Jason before this tragedy struck," says filmmaker Metzger. "I got a call — 'Jason's in the hospital. It's touch and go.' A few hours later I was looking down at Jason on a hospital bed.
"For months, I was in the email loop, receiving occasional updates about Jason's condition, Monica's pregnancy, the surgeries, the setbacks. But these updates, sent by the Criglers to their vast web of friends, were more than just informational. There was an incandescent love in these letters. Later, when the Criglers asked if I would consider making a documentary about the whole saga, I knew their beautiful optimism amid the heaps of suffering would be the story. Of course, I underestimated the entire thing."
Life. Support. Music. is a production of Merigold Moving Pictures.
Talk About This
When will the program, POV - Life, Support - Music be on Channel 2 Boston or Channel 36 in Providence? I can't wait to see if but I don't have Channel 44.
Please advie. Thank you!
Louisa Cicillini
by Louisa Cicillini
July 6, 2009, 7:00 PM
I found this story deeply moving and timely. My husband Scott is a New York City jazz guitarist. Shortly after the release of his duo album "Ripples" in November 2008 he was diagnosed with the return of non-hodgkins lymphoma. We were told to put everything aside because his treatment would require all of our strength and attention. He went through two rounds of chemo to achieve remission. Then, his stem cells were harvested in preparation for an autologous stem cell transplant. He had the transplant in February with a grueling 5 weeks in hospital. Two weeks later the lymphoma returned in his neck. He immediately started radiation to the left area of his neck and endured 22 treatments.
As I write this I am sitting by his bedside in Cornell hospital where he was transported after passing out and hitting his head. Throughout the month of June he had recurrent episode of mind-numbing pain and fainting. The doctors couldn't figure it out. Because he's lost over 50 lbs they thought perhaps dehydration and malnutrition was causing the problem.
He is now awaiting a pacemaker because it was discovered that the radiated mass in his neck is pressing on his carotid artery causing his heart to slow and even stop. He has been confined to his hospital bed in one position for over a week awaiting the pacemaker. First the doctors needed to remove an infected port. Today his blood pressure plunged dangerously low and the procedure has yet again been postponed.
Throughout we have been surrounded by a community of family, friends, musicians and students offering support, love, food, rides and a shoulder to cry on. We can't see the end yet but Jason's story gives us the glimmer of hope we need to keep going. Jazz lives and so must it's messengers.
Jennifer Sherwood
by Jennifer Sherwood
July 6, 2009, 8:42 PM
I happened to be surfing through the channels tonight and came across this film. It grabbed my attention and I watched it. What an incredible story. It was so amazing to see the family pull together and through their belief that Jason could get better - they made it happen. If only this could happen to everyone who has gone through something like Jason. What an incredible journey for everyone involved. Thanks to everyone who was willing to share this wonderful story.
by Mary Huber
July 7, 2009, 11:24 PM
July 7, 2009
As I've gone through life, I've seen miracles that weren't supposed to happen but did. A neighbor of mine also had a stroke and wasn't expected to recover but the strength of his wife & of his boxer dog forcing him to move and with both showing unconditional love, he was brought back to full recovery despite doctors expectations.
My son, also, was not expected to be born normal due to several medical factors, but he was, and this - despite the fact that I acquired toxemia in the 33rd week of his life. He still made it and didn't even require oxygen, although he had to be taken or we both would've perished.
I now am convinced that the strength of the mind and willpower, esp. that of love, can change the course of what "should've been". I know, I've seen it and have been in that boat as well. Don't give up!
M. Marjorie Sortomme
by M Marjorie Sortomme
July 8, 2009, 3:26 AM
My husband was diagnosed with Colon Cancer in 1993...after six months of going to the doctor and being told he had stomach problems which required antibiotics and a low fiber diet....a barium enema was eventually prescribed. He had a colon resection and it was discovered the cancer had spread to his liver, it was believed he could be saved if he had a liver resection. He was being prepped for surgery at St. Vincent's hospital in NYC, when the chief of surgery came into the room and said they would not do the surgery, the insurance said it was a "palliative measure". Not a live saving measure so they denied it..They told us he had "4 to 6 months to live and he should enjoy his time".They released him and we went to a restaurant and ate and got drunk...
We did not have good insurance, my late husband was a chef, but I got a job at a hosptial...and eventually we were able to pay OURSELVES for him to have a liver resection at Sloan Kettering. Because of the inept medical and insurance system, because of the misdiagnosis of the first Doctor........my husband died three years almost to the day he was first operated on. I personally and I know he felt that extra 2 year and a half years was worth the surgery.....We had a good quality of life. When he left the planet he left me, our eight year old and our five year old.......The whole thing is still a nightmare....Mykids never recovered..and I guess I am a little wacky from it myself....
This documentary..........was wonderfully positive in it's ending...but my point.......WHAT KIND OF SYSTEM DO WE HAVE........Had my husband had quick, good medical care.....(our insurance only allowed us to go to Beekman Place for his cat scan we waited six weeks, it did not come out and we had to wait again for another, and this was just one incident).....he would be here today..
by Jane Auerbach Green
July 8, 2009, 10:04 AM
My belief system is all wrapped up in a higher power and purpose. While it was amazing to see this family pull together to aid Jason, not one time did I hear the word prayer or God's name mentioned. Maybe this was because IT was not allowed to be mentioned. Jason survived because God made it so. His last comments in this documentary were "believing doesn't come from nowhere". Jason was dead and is now alive again... a second chance to do it right and to have fellowship with his creator. God Bless he and his family and my prayer is that we who serve a mighty God will all one day see Jason in that heavenly realm.
by Darryl Staten
July 8, 2009, 1:27 PM
I missed the film, tevoed it but apparently did not have enough space. I received this from a friend, and will try to rent the movie on Netflix. A long, long time ago, my seven year old daughter was bitten by mosquitoes in Acapulco, Mexico. We luckily had returned home before the virus of Venezuelan equine encephalitis fully developed. Ten days after we were back, she began to have frightening seizures. We took her to the hospital where she suffered more seizures and cardiac arrest. After being revived by Dr. Andler,the neurologist who had operated on Robert Kennedy after the assasination, she lapsed into a deep coma which lasted six unending weeks. I sat by her bedside from morning to late at night, with some short time off to be with our eight-year old son. My husband came to the hospital in the morning and at night, as his law practice allowed. When she came home, she was brain damaged and had paralysis on her right side, with a loss of speech. With love from us all, a small family, she recovered much, but never totally. Her speech came back when I sang to her and joined me in familiar songs. Through music she learned words again. Earlier, doctors had made the prognosis that she would never recover, and advised to institutionlize her. We did not. However, after many years my husband despaired, he called me a dreamer who did not live in the real world. He did not believe as I did in Beings who helped from above, and on whom I called. During a thunderstorm, he cursed God and I thought he did so to have God strike him with a thunderbolt, to have God prove that yes, I do exist. But it only rained harder and I led him upstairs and this time I sang lullabys to this grown man to calm him. After many years passed and she had developed into a lithom young womnan, with however limitatins, my husband left us. I had lived for her, and he had not been able to stand the pain of having a "damaged" child. I found in her a child who had developed in a very spirtitual person, who before her end at age twenty-nine, wrote poetry, not of the "rhyme-you" kind, but innocent and deep. Men fell in love with her beauty,and woman loved her because of her sweetness and innocense. After the divorce, we moved to a smaller city north of L.A. where it was safer for her. She had a rich life in travels with me to Africa and Europe, she learned about Shakespeare not from books but from seeing his plays on stage, and since she knew that I loved the theater, she learned and remembered. The one fear we had were interrmittant seizures. There were years when she was free of them, but then she began to shake again. Back to her medicines. In her last months, she had begun being a teachers assistant in K grade in a charter school, near where she lived,in a little cottage her grandparents had bought for her. A seocnd mother, as she called her, from Guatemala helped her to become partially independent. Every day she walked to school and came home after four hours. Then she fell in love, with a handsome carpenter, who wanted to marry her. And one day, out of the blue after she had been feeling healthy and wrote a poem of how she would want to live her life over again if given the chance, because then she could teach others how to never give up and live life as it presented itself, and always be grateful for what one had and cry for what could have been, and after an evening with her new love, she took a bath and suddenly he didn't hear her singing any more. He went to check on her and there she was, in the tub, dead. Her head was inclined toward her shoulder, her hair streaming down in waves, a smile on her face. He tried to revive her, one last kiss, but it did not awaken her as kisses in fairytales did the sleeping princess.
Another giant seizure had caused her heart to stop. Like in the beginning of her illness, the seizure and then cardiac arrest. I learned that her boyfriend had talked her out of taking her meds. "Love cures all," he had tolkd her. Yes, love is important in the recovery process, but it has to be tempered by reason. The autopsy showed that there was no medication in her body, that her brain was riddled with cysts, caused by the seizure activity over the years, and that if she had not died at that time, she would have had maybe siz more months to live. She would have slipped into a coma and then? I forgave the young man. Aida, who came back from a Christmas vacation in her country, wanted to kill him. She could not understand that I found no place for hatred in my heart. He had gven my daughter four months of extreme happiness. I had not seen her that radiant before. Things happened the way they were ordained, and I would not argue with fate. Years have passed, I have a lighted seven-day candle in front of her photograph, from which she smiles impishly at me,her dark eyes reflecting the light of the candle, as if she were alive. Every evening before I go to bed I shed a tear, and say to her, "I love you Stephanie." And no, the pain does not go away, but it transmutes from searing and not wanting to live, to a milder form. And her death took my own fear of death away. I would see her again! Ours had been a long journey of love and never giving up.
by Karin Finell
July 11, 2009, 11:03 PM
This is an amazing love story starting with Monica and then the extended family. Jason is a lucky man in many ways, but most of all because of love. We should all be inspired by this story - to be a better husband, wife, father, mother, friend, lover, etc. Because you never know where life will take you. Enjoy it now. While you can, knowing that love will be there when you need it. And find a way to share that love with others.
by J
July 18, 2009, 2:51 AM
I was just surfing through channels on Friday night, I was tired and wanted to go to bed early, I landed on this movie just starting and I was immediately caught into the story about Jason and his family. I can't relate to his story, but I was very touched by how strong his family was, and how they pulled together, I couldn't help but shedding a few tears, and smiling seeing him singing and playing again. I hope there are more successful stories just like Jason's out there in the world. If this has given any on looker any sort of advice, it's never give up.
by Alex
July 18, 2009, 4:58 PM
Wow. What an inspirational story. I can relate on so many levels as I, too, am a survivor of a catastrophic injury. I was on the I35W bridge when it collapsed in Mpls, MN on Aug 1, 2007. I plunged close to 7 stories in my car onto the Mississippi riverbank and slammed into a stone wall. It was questionable if I would survive due to the traumatic injuries I incurred. Once I made it through, doctors questioned if I would be able to keep my left leg which was so badly injured, and whether I would walk again. I was in the hospital for a month and half and was unable to walk for four months. I recently had my tenth surgery in less than two years which was to remove all of the metal from both legs.
I understand overcoming obstacles and proving medical personnel wrong. Of course, like Jason, I couldn't have done it without the love and support of friends and family including the love and support of my then fiance, now husband Jake. He has been my rock throughout my ongoing recovery. Jake is also heavily involved in the local music scene as he is a DJ, and it was absolutely amazing to see his musician friends rally together to host an amazing benefit to help pay for my medical expenses. The music community was definitely there for us in our greatest time of need.
Anyway, thank you for airing this inspirational story. We need more stories like this on TV.
I wish Jason & Monica the best!
Mercedes
by Mercedes
July 19, 2009, 1:29 AM