“When I was 16, I got hit by a baseball bat…”
Watertown Middle School math teacher Manoukian undergoes surgery 17 years after accident
Cluster 6 math teacher Aram Manoukian recently returned to work at Watertown Middle School after undergoing surgery on his skull to fix a problem that began in 1996.
“When I was 16, I got hit by a baseball bat. I was passed out for a week and a half.”
It all happened in the Watertown High School gym during baseball practice in 1996. A teammate swung a bat and hit Aram Manoukian on the right side of his head.
He had surgery and five metal plates were put into his head to bring his skull back together. The metal plates have been there ever since. But for the last 17 years, he suffered from massive headaches that he found out were caused, in part, by the screws attaching the metal plate to his skull and also his sinus.
He couldn’t take the headaches anymore.
So the Cluster 6 math teacher at Watertown Middle School recently had two screws that were screwed into the sinus taken out — the other ones were covered with bone, so they couldn’t be removed — and he was out of school for more than a week.
He is still recovering, but he is very happy with how he is recovering. Mr. Manoukian said that since the surgery happened he has been getting less headaches.
When he had the accident, there was absolutely no blood! Everyone was in great shock. At the scene and in the ambulance, everyone thought he was going to die. The doctors said it was a miracle he lived.
Six months before the accident, his mom passed away and the fact that he didn’t die, or even bleed at all, is taken by Mr. Manoukian and his family as if his mom was looking over him from heaven.
His mom’s “thing” was baseball. After the Red Sox clinched pennant in 1967, his mom ran on the field with other fans and took dirt from the mound. So he made a promise to himself to never stop playing.
His mom always went to all his games and was very supportive of him. People asked him, “Aren’t you scared to play again?”
The one word he always said to that question was, “No.”
He wasn’t scared because the second he got hit by the bat, he passed out. He didn’t feel anything.
When he woke up after a week in the hospital, he had no idea what had happened to him. He said he got up and looked in the mirror and thought, “What happened to me?”
His family told him what happened. His family and the doctor knew that it was a miracle he lived. His mom was his motivation.
–Dec. 12, 2013–
