A violent crash. Traumatic brain injury. He's missed out on a lot. But not his senior prom

Indianapolis Star

12-05-2025

INDIANAPOLIS -- Matthias Pfister remembers staring out the passenger seat window, watching the scenery whiz past as he listened to music that Saturday afternoon.
He had just gone to his sister's dance recital at Zionsville High School and then out to eat at Cobblestone, a restaurant that was pretty fancy, at least in his 13-year-old mind.
Matthias can remember leaving Cobblestone before the rest of the family with his dad, Kyle. He remembers sliding into the passenger seat of their Ford Escape to make the 45-minute drive back home to Danville.
Twenty-five minutes later, Matthias was looking out the car window, listening to music.
Then everything stopped.
On Feb. 22, 2020, Matthias and his dad's Ford Escape collided with another vehicle at an intersection. The impact hit the right side of their Escape, in what police said was a violent crash. Matthias' mom, grandmother, brother and sister were in another car behind his when they came up on the scene.
"I saw the lights. I got kind of nervous because they weren't too far ahead of us," said Lauren Pfister, Matthias' mom. At first, she didn't think it looked like their car. "All of a sudden it hit me it was their vehicle."
Then, from a distance, Lauren saw the white. She started panicking. Matthias was wearing white that day and Lauren could see his shirt on the passenger side.
"I got out and I took off running and yelling. The police officer intervened and told me I didn't what to go up there," Lauren said. "I kept asking if he was alive and if he was OK."
The officers couldn't -- or maybe they didn't want to -- tell her.
Kyle woke up startled inside the Escape. He was fine physically, besides some minor hand pain. He looked over to make sure Matthias was OK. Nothing about his son looked OK.
"To be honest," said Kyle, "I kind of thought the worst."
It's Saturday afternoon, five years later, and Matthias is wearing a black tux, glittery black shoes and a lavender-kissed white rose pinned to his lapel. His arm is around his girlfriend Kaylee Geisel, who is wearing a long black gown with a wrist corsage made of smaller white roses tipped in lavender.
They are laughing as they stand on the canal at White River State Park draped by a backdrop of downtown high rises and next to art sculptures. They are getting their photos taken. This is Matthias' senior prom, a moment no one was sure would happen.
After photos on Saturday, Matthias and Kaylee went to the Eagle's Nest for a fancy dinner before heading to his Ben Davis High School prom at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis. They danced the night away, and they were grateful.
This is a special night for Matthias, whose life changed forever all those years ago when he suffered a traumatic brain injury in that car crash.
He had to give up his beloved sports of baseball, football and basketball. He struggles to fully move his left arm and hand. His gait is mildly affected. He is blind in his right eye due to optic nerve damage. He didn't get his driver's license when he turned 16, and he still doesn't drive.
But all those things, somehow, unbelievably, don't seem all that important to the Pfisters now.
Five years ago, Matthias was 13 years old, laying in a hospital bed, and doctors didn't know if he would live. And if he did live, they didn't know if he would be the same Matthias he had been before the accident.
"I did not know if he was someone who would be able to do the things he'd been doing or if he was someone who would be wheelchair bound and in special educations classes," said Dr. Matthew Friedman, a physician in the pediatric intensive care unit at Riley Hospital for Children, who cared for Matthias. "Would he be able to live a life that he'd been living?"
Matthias is on the Ben Davis golf and bowling teams and is a manager for the basketball team. He has a 3.8 GPA, ranking him in the top 10% of his nearly 1,100-student class. He will attend Indiana University Indianapolis in the fall studying to become a vascular neurologist, focused on strokes and brain injuries.
Focused on helping people just like him. After all, it was those doctors and neurosurgeons who saved his life, says Matthias.
"I want to help children or other people similar to me and my injuries," he said. "I appreciate my doctors and everything they did for me. They inspired me."
Five years ago, Matthias' brain was very, very sick.
After being taken by a Lifeline helicopter to Riley, doctors discovered the pressure in Matthias' brain was critical. In a healthy brain, the intracranial pressure ranges in single digits, usually five or less. In sick patients, doctors like to keep brain pressure below 15 or 20.
"When he first came in, he was totally unresponsive, so he wasn't doing anything," said Friedman. "And his pressure, when they put the monitor in, was 38. So, that was incompatible with long-term survival or a good outcome."
When Kyle and Lauren arrived at the hospital, a surgeon came down to talk with them.
'I told the family Matthias is very ill and will die unless I take him to the operating room, and he still might die after that,' Dr. Jeffrey Raskin, a Riley pediatric neurosurgeon at the time, told the Pfisters.
"It was all a blur," said Lauren. "He told us straight forward if (Matthias) didn't go into the surgery, he might not make it."
Matthias was taken quickly into the operating room for a decompressive craniectomy where doctors removed a portion of his skull to open up space for his brain to swell. They repaired scalp lacerations and did procedures to stop his brain from bleeding.
Kyle and Lauren went to the family waiting room in shock. Their son was having brain surgery, their standout baseball player whose travel team had won a state championship the season before. They waited in fear, desperately hoping that Matthias would be OK.
"The doctors came down and said he made it through surgery," said Kyle. "He was alive."
But Matthias wasn't OK.
"He was sedated and paralyzed with medication," said Friedman. "Machines were breathing for him as well as having multiple IVs and catheters."
Matthias was in a coma for nine days. On the third day, he had a stroke. For weeks, his family and friends waited, hoping for the best.
"His long-term neurological function was definitely a significant question," said Friedman. "Whether he would be able to do the things he's doing today or whether he would have much more severe neurological injury."
Matthias ran the Mini Marathon earlier this month, 13.1 miles in three hours and 26 minutes. It was a 15.73-minute pace and that was wonderful. Kaylee ran it with him.
She has been a rock for Matthias. He met Kaylee on Snapchat three years ago when she went to Martinsville High. She is now a freshman at IU in Bloomington.
The first sign Matthias gave to his family that he would be doing all the things he is today was when he squeezed their hands from his hospital bed. When he woke up for the first time, he had no idea what had happened. His dad told him he had been in a car accident and had a brain injury, then a stroke.
Mostly what Matthias remembers about waking up was all the love. "I remember a lot of family there supporting and cheering me on with every little thing," he said.
As the weeks passed in the hospital, Matthias started making small improvements. Giving a thumbs up. Asking to thumb wrestle. Writing on a white board. His injuries had left Matthias unable to talk.
Then he asked for candy. Matthias was back mentally.
But he had a long way to go physically.
The rehab was intense, relearning how to do just about everything he'd been able to do before the accident.
"It was tough, really challenging, every day trying to push myself further and further each day trying to get better," Matthias said. "I had to learn how to listen to the therapists and doctors around me because I thought I knew everything when I really didn't."
He had physical therapy to learn how to walk again. He had occupational therapy to learn how to get dressed and feed himself. There were hours and hours and hours of rehab.
"When he first came out of ICU to the recovery floor, he couldn't move his left arm," said Kyle. "His mouth was almost clear to the right side of his face because the whole left side was affected. He couldn't move his legs at all."
Matthias got down to 73 pounds.
"He got super skinny and super weak," said Kyle. "He lived on mashed potatoes and Ensure. But he kept getting stronger, started walking and did more therapy. He was making huge gains."
Being an athlete was something that Matthias said motivated him.
"It helped me from the mental standpoint of trying to stay optimistic," he said. "In baseball, a lot of it is mental. In baseball, a good positive perspective out of everything is important and I applied that to my situation."
Sports was also a motivator, Lauren said, because Matthias desperately wanted to get back on the field. Matthias persevered and worked harder than even he knew he could. And after a long few months, he got to go home.
'He will probably walk out of the hospital," Raskin said at the time, "as one of the truly most amazing recoveries I have ever seen."
But the recovery wasn't everything Matthias had hoped for.
"I would say one thing I missed out on was sports, the old sports I used to play -- baseball, football. I still play basketball a little bit in a league," Matthias said. "The next thing is my friends. After my car accident, my friends didn't know how to handle it with my brain injury and stroke, so I came back different. They stopped being friends with me."
Life changed in an instant five years ago for Matthias, but it hasn't stopped him. He has moved forward in big ways, changing, transforming and latching onto new challenges. Bowling, golfing, managing the basketball team, applying for college. And going to his senior prom.
Friedman remembers clearly that day five years ago when he met Matthias and his family. It was the worst day of their lives. There were so many unknowns.
"Mathias was one of those patients that you really felt like, 'I can make a difference here if I do a good job. I can make him better,'" said Friedman. "This is why we do the training, this is why we put in the hours, this is why we do all the hard work.
"It's for the patient like him who could go either way, and if we do everything right, we're going to give him the best chance to do better."
Matthias certainly has made a remarkable recovery. He's had a lot of big moments and a lot of small moments. He's had tough times and wonderful times. What has stood out through it all, Friedman said, is Matthias' determination, positive attitude even when things were tough, and his relentless perseverance.
"Honestly, this is why we do this," said Friedman. "We so often don't get to see this. So to get the opportunity to see how far he's come and how far he's gone, that's really amazing."