Brown guard Joe Sharkey has made tremendous strides since May attack
Three months after a late-night altercation outside a Providence bar left him bloodied and unconscious, Brown guard Joe Sharkey is disproving doctors who feared he might never recover.
Sharkey is undergoing physical and cognitive therapy at home, twice a day, five days a week and he plans to take at least one class at Brown during fall semester. He declined to speak with the Providence Journal this week, but Brown assistant T.J. Sorrentine said, aside from the scar where the back of his head smacked the pavement, Sharkey seemed almost normal when he stopped by a camp earlier this month to mingle with his teammates.
“Physically, he walks around fine,” Sorrentine told the Journal. “He’s still weak and he’s lost a lot of weight. But he looked great and knows everything that is going on.”
That Sharkey appears to be on track to make a full recovery is terrific news considering how fearful those close to him were in the days following the May 12 incident. He was on life support when he first entered the hospital and he underwent three hours of surgery to relieve swelling around his brain two days later.
Sharkey opened up about the challenges of his recovery process last month in an online diary post.
"This has without a doubt been the toughest two months of my entire life," he wrote. "It truly warmed my heart every time someone that saw me right after the injury, saw me again in the present, and held a bewildered look on their face at how much I've improved. While Spaulding certainly deserves a lot of credit for this vast improvement, it's clear to me that almost as large a part of my recovery is due to all of the compassion shown to me by my loved ones. The countless visits from friends and family have made me so thankful for the amazing support system I have in place."
