Columnist Susan Snyder: Brakes work in Brady’s favor

Tuesday, May 4, 2004 | 8:18 a.m.

Trev Brady wasn't expected to live.

And when he survived the stroke that struck him the day after Christmas 1997, his doctors said he wasn't going to walk.

Suffice to say the docs never even considered Brady would once again pedal the bicycle-built-for-two he rode with his wife, Rema.

But three months after Brady's stroke, the couple were back on the road atop their tandem with Brady in his usual spot.

The front.

"In the hospital, they kept saying, 'Use it, or lose it.' But they also told me, 'You may never walk again,' " the 50-year-old Las Vegas resident said.

"I said, 'That's not an option.' "

The Bradys recalled the incident that forever changed their lives while enjoying a Sunday brunch at the Fiesta in Henderson.

They were dining with fellow members of the Las Vegas Valley Bicycle Club after working as volunteer route marshals for the road race of the April 25 Las Vegas Triathlon at Lake Las Vegas Resort.

Before the stroke jumbled his thought processes and stole the sensation of feeling from the right side of his body, Brady was a construction manager and avid bicyclist.

Five days after his stroke he was transferred to a rehabilitation center, where he received medication that aggravated a peptic ulcer no one knew he had, Rema said. They rushed him back to the hospital, where he nearly bled to death internally.

To this day she remembers the telephone call from his doctor.

"He said, 'Mrs. Brady, your husband is a young man, and he wouldn't want to live like this. If his heart stops, do you want us to resuscitate him?' "

She stopped there, as she always does. She didn't need to repeat her reply because her answer was sitting next to her sipping a glass of iced tea.

Brady remembers those first few days better than people think. He says his outlook has always been far better than his prognosis.

"I thought I was fine. I just couldn't tell anybody," he said. "I didn't realize how bad it was until later."

Once he was out of the woods, it was time to regain whatever skills he could. He spent long hours on a treadmill just trying to take a few steps without stumbling.

"The day I could actually run, I cried," Brady said.

Within a few days he was bugging his therapist to ride his bike. She reluctantly agreed, but told him to stay in the center's driveway.

Of course, Brady took the inch and made it a mile.

"There was gravel at the end of the driveway where I was supposed to turn around. So I had to go out in the street," he grinned.

Once he and Rema were back in their saddles, they worked on his balance and sense of direction.

It was a study in trust. The front rider on a tandem is the one who controls the bike -- turns, gears, brakes and speed.

You think hanging wallpaper tests a marriage?

"Everything is backwards. My thought processes are turned around," Brady said. "Rema would be back there yelling, 'Left! Turn left!' but it didn't mean anything to me."

They still laugh about that. They laugh often and usually with the bicycle club friends who they say helped bring Brady back among the living.

"When I first got out (of the rehab center), I went to the stroke club," he said. "They are really nice people, but they were a lot older than I was. It was like they were waiting to die. And I wasn't ready for that."

So the Bradys turned to the bicycle club. They had long been members, but not volunteers. On a ride through Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area one day, they met some fellow club members and tandem riders who said they needed volunteers for an upcoming three-day club event for tandem riders.

"I told them, 'I can't talk, but I have a truck and I'm willing.' And they said, 'So get into your truck and shut up,' " Brady recalled.

"The people in the bicycle club accept him the way he is," Rema Brady added. "They don't pity him. They don't cut him any breaks."

Brady now sits on the club's board of directors, and he and his wife keep track of the memberships. He also is vice president and a founding member of the Silver State Bicycle Coalition, a nonprofit bicycle safety education group.

In January, Brady passed a Nevada Office of Traffic Safety course that allows him to teach bicycle and pedestrian safety to children. He helped teach his first bike safety class to a pair of Cub Scout packs in Boulder City in April.

The part where he fits the boys' helmets was hard. With no feeling in his right hand, Brady has trouble adjusting helmet straps.

"It takes me all day to do mine," he laughed. "But one of those boys looked up at me and said, 'Thank you.' And you know, that makes it all worth it."

Brady still can't count to 15 or spell very well. He can only read written material that is printed in narrow blocks, such as newspapers and magazines. Longer lines of type run together.

When he can't do something, he laughs first. Then he tries harder.

"When it gets real scary, you just close your eyes and keep going," Brady said. "And then, you just do it."