Brandon Crandall RN and Robert Kellman MD.
Upstate student Brandon Crandall RN has a lot going on. He works part-time in the neurology unit of Upstate University Hospital, and he is midway through the Nurse Practitioner program in the College of Nursing.
He is a resident advisor at Clark Tower, president of its activities board, and has been involved in plans for the new Geneva Tower residence hall, opening this summer. He is also a College of Nursing representative for Upstate Student Government.
Most people who know Crandall know all those things.
But most people aren’t aware that he almost died in a head-on snowmobile crash when he was 16.
It happened during his junior year at Paul V. Moore High School in Central Square. Crandall was giving his sister a ride on a snowmobile on a trail near their home in Brewerton, north of Syracuse. They crested a hill and collided with a snowmobile coming in the opposite direction. The operator of the other snowmobile was killed.
Brandon sustained massive facial injuries and swelling of the brain. His sister suffered a concussion and a broken finger. Brandon was in critical condition, in a coma for a week and spent six weeks at University Hospital.
“I came this close to dying,” he says, holding his thumb and index finger about an inch apart. “Upstate saved my life. Dr. Robert Kellman MD and about three other surgeons reconstructed my face.”
Brandon doesn’t remember details of the crash and only recalls the last two weeks in the hospital, when he was in the rehabilitation unit.
He recovered enough to graduate with his high school class in 2006. After a year at SUNY Canton, he decided on nursing and earned his associate’s degree and became a registered nurse through the Crouse School of Nursing.
The crash, and his successful treatment and recovery, may have played a part in Crandell’s decision to pursue nursing, but it wasn’t the primary influence.
He says his brother-in-law, Joshua Harrison MD provided a good example of the hard work and dedication needed to forge a career in health care. Harrison graduated from Upstate’s College of Medicine and is a first-year medical resident here.
Crandell, in pursuit of his master’s in nursing, says he has a never-ending thirst for knowledge. He enjoys when people come to him with medical questions, and he enjoys finding the answers.
“You can study for the rest of your life, and there’s never an end point,” he says. For now, his goal is a career in intensive care, the specialty that helped save his life.
