A year after collapse, Mason Martin’s family finding hope and ‘moving forward’
COWANSVILLE, Armstrong County — A year after his teenage son, a Karns City Area Jr./Sr. High School quarterback, collapsed during a football game, Denny Martin can finally sit back and let his mind rest at night.
Sitting around their living room table, Denny Martin and his two daughters — Sydney, 14, and McKenna, 20, spoke about the past 12 months, and the whirlwind of life-altering events that have left their mark on each member of the close-knit family.
One year has passed since Mason staggered on the field before collapsing during the third quarter of the Gremlins’ home game against the Redbank Valley Bulldogs on Sept. 1, 2023. Earlier that night, he had scored a touchdown.
The senior, then 17, was taken from the field at Karns City’s Diehl Stadium by ambulance and airlifted to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, where he began a months-long recovery from a brain bleed and collapsed lung.
He spent nine months in three hospitals before returning home in early June and continuing his recovery. He now uses a wheelchair as he continues physical therapy.
Two weeks ago marked the first time in nearly a year, Denny said, that he heard his son’s voice — not a grunt — during a speech therapy exercise.
“That was like a game-winning touchdown in the final seconds,” he said.
Denny said he hopes to hear more vocalization, see more spontaneous movement, and for Mason to continue hitting these kinds of milestones consistently.
A realistic next step, he said, is for Mason to start eating by mouth again, instead of using a feeding tube.
“Everyone thinks this is something so terrible that’s happened to our family,” Denny said. “But I wake up every day and I thank God that I get to spend another day with Mason. It gives you a different view of gratitude. You really are grateful that you get to spend another day with your kid when you’ve come so close to losing him.”
“It gave me a different outlook on life,” said Mason’s younger sister, Sydney. “It definitely made me mature a lot more. I appreciate everything more because the fact is, anything can change. I didn’t really think that much when I was younger. I just took things for granted.”
Denny said he is more empathetic.
“The biggest change is I’m aware of things that I’ve either turned a blind eye to or ignored in the past,” Denny said. “If I see someone in a wheelchair at Walmart, I recognize that now, where before, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it.
“Or any little thing you hear on the news — somebody’s in an automobile accident ... I immediately feel for that family. Those are things I probably wouldn’t even have paid attention to or even have picked up on and now I hear it all.”
At home, medicine bottles and packages are neatly clustered on the living room table and line a shelf. There are medications that must be taken in the morning, others in the afternoon and night. There are papers that list the names of the medicines and that are saved in each family member’s phone, though Denny said by now, he knows his son’s medical schedule and the long list of prescription drugs by heart.
Weekdays keep the Martin family busy. Mornings start at 7 a.m. to prepare for the myriad doctor and physical therapy appointments.
Weekends move slower without the routine list of appointments to drive to, and without the help of either of the two home nurses. On Saturday and Sunday, it’s just Denny at home with Mason, his youngest daughter, Sydney, and occasionally, the eldest, McKenna.
“I try to set goals,” Denny said. “Let’s get outside and do something today, or get him outside for 30 minutes, or go for a ride.”
“We try to just make it as normal as we can,” he said.
When asked how the past year has affected the family dynamic, Denny said between himself and his children, much remains unchanged.
“We’re still the same,” Denny said. “We joke around. We like to have fun. We like to try to make the best of any situation. We’re still close. We’ve always been close.”
In October, while Mason was hospitalized in Pittsburgh, Stacy, Denny’s wife and mother of his children, lost her battle with Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer.
“I’ve lost the one person that I can be completely honest with and vent to without them judging me,” he said. “There are times where I'm just sitting here at night and it’s just me and my thoughts. And that gets kind of lonely for sure, shouldering all the work for Mason.”
Stacy was 42 when she died Oct. 15 after a 10-year battle with breast cancer. Denny said if Stacy, who was a nurse, were alive and well she would have been instrumental in Mason’s care.
“If Stacy was alive and capable, we wouldn’t have a home nurse,” Denny said. “She would take care of him — 24/7, no problem. She would do it with a smile on her face.”
“That was the darkest moment of my life,” he said. “Stacy, we lost her.”
Since their marriage in 2003, the Martins were inseparable, he said. Once, after a beach vacation that Stacy took without him, the two decided that even a week was too much time apart.
Denny drove to the hospital every day to be with Mason. Sydney was staying with her grandparents.
“And for the first time in 20 years, I came home to an empty house,” he said. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was coming home from the hospital walking through these doors to nothing.”
McKenna, who had just started her freshman year at Clarion University, took a leave of absence shortly after the accident. When she returned to school, she said while college life helped distract her from crisis at home, her focus remained on her brother’s condition and her family.
“Every night when I went to sleep, my thoughts were Mason,” she said. “Every morning when I woke up, my thoughts were Mason.”
“My best friend was fighting for his life,” McKenna said. “And I had to try to focus on doing this literature assignment? Like, it just didn’t make sense.”
Ultimately, she opted to finish the semester and postpone college.
Denny said although he did not share it with his eldest daughter at the time in order not to pressure her, her decision to return home “saved” him.
“That was the lowest I've ever been in my life,” he said. “And whenever she said that to me (her decision to postpone college), it was like a complete 180. I got my family back, you know? And it's kind of like if you got your family back, you got your life back.”
Reflecting on the first few weeks after Mason collapsed on the football field, Denny said the hardest part was tracking how quickly his health would fluctuate.
“I always said the hardest part within the first six weeks was how fast things changed,” Denny said. “Your mind wouldn’t be able to process the situation yet before a new situation would pop up.”
Denny said his mind was in a constant state of chaos.
“(Mason is) laying there in a coma, but things are changing so quickly, you have to almost experience that to completely understand it,” he said. “But you’re just watching monitors, and you’re watching numbers change so fast, and you know that inside of him, so much is going on.”
Life has slowed a bit since the first few weeks of Mason’s hospitalization. With his son at home, Denny said he has finally processed what happened the night of Sept. 1 and the months of medical intervention that followed.
A longtime physical education instructor, Denny was granted a sabbatical this year from Moniteau School District to focus on his son’s health. Other teachers donated sick days.
He said without the school district’s support, he likely would have had to quit his job.
With his children back home, the help of two nurses — Cali Parisi, a day nurse, and Dustie Switzer, a night nurse — also allowed for the family’s adjustment to life outside of the hospital.
“That’s why I can check out at night,” Denny said.
“I can just finally relax,” Sydney said. “I'm not constantly on the edge of my seat.”
The purple and gold signs displaying support for the now-18 year old haven’t been taken down from the yards or businesses they were put in last year.
To still see the signs up is incredible, Denny said. He said he doesn’t drive past a “Mason Strong” sign without acknowledging the people who rooted for his son in the hospital.
Denny said the family keeps “boxes and boxes of cards” in a storage unit, sent by community members and strangers wishing the family and his son well.
“We’ve read them all to (Mason), but we’re keeping them,” Denny said. “We’re not getting rid of that stuff.”
To accommodate the number of gifts sent by strangers who wanted to share their support with the family, Mason’s room has turned into a “shrine,” his sisters joked.
Denny said he didn’t know who many of the gifts were from as he held up a blanket with an illustration of his son in football gear.
“I just cannot believe how good people are,” he said, sitting at the dining table. “You know what I mean? It shocks me that people care that much, especially strangers that have never met us before.”
The father of three continues to provide updates about his son’s health condition and the family on Facebook.
“I feel that God’s given me a platform, and I want to use that platform not to vent, not to complain, but to shine a light on people that have just been amazing and helped us out in so many ways,” he said. “And to shine a light on how He’s working through Mason, you know, and how He’s answering our prayers.”
Life, meanwhile, is moving fast for the Martins.
Sydney is entering her first year of high school in the Karns City district, and excited to join friends.
In a few weeks, McKenna, who plans to return to college next year, will give birth to a little girl. She will name her Macy, in honor of her brother, Mason, and Stacy, her mother.
“I hope it’s symbolic of the regrowth of our family,” Denny said. “Here we come. The baby’s coming. Mason’s coming back. We’re just — we’re moving forward.”
