A 42-year-old Navy veteran and Port of San Diego Harbor Police officer is recovering after a seizure led doctors to discover a dangerous brain condition, called arterial arteriovenous malformation or AVM, that required multiple surgeries.<\/p>\n
Officer Mitchell Collier suffered the seizure on Sept. 16 while at a mall arcade with his two young sons after school. His wife, Sheena Collier, who is a nurse, said she was at the end of her shift when she received a phone call from him that immediately raised concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was Mitchell and he sounded like, you know, I felt like something was happening,\u201d Sheena Collier said. \u201cHe said, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m with the kids,\u2019 and I thought, ‘OK?’ and that\u2019s when another voice was in the background, and it was the fire captain. And he said, \u2018I\u2019m with your husband right now. He\u2019s here at the mall. He had a seizure. He\u2019s here with your children. Are you able to come here and be here?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
From there, Sheena Collier said she immediately rushed to the mall and Mitchell Collier was taken to Scripps Mercy Hospital. She said they didn\u2019t have any inkling of what could have caused this to happen at the time.<\/p>\n
After scans and imaging, doctors diagnosed Mitchell Collier with an arteriovenous malformation, also known as an AVM. Sheena Collier described it as a tangled knot of vessels and arteries that prevented blood from flowing properly to his brain.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came out of nowhere. There was no indication. He didn\u2019t feel dizzy,\u201d she said, adding that he didn\u2019t do anything out of the ordinary that day.<\/p>\n
Once doctors identified the AVM, she said there was initial hope because there was treatment. However, because of the size and location of the AVM, the process became more complex.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was another really daunting information process, that it wasn\u2019t just like a get in there and out,\u201d she said. \u201cWe knew that it was going to take four [to] five, roughly, procedures for him to get treated.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, that\u2019s what they did. After five separate procedures, causing the Collier family to go back and forth from stays at the hospital to home, surgeons were able to remove the AVM during a final surgery, but that time, his recovery process required more intensive care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf a normal, everyday person were to see Mitchell, he looks like himself. He is very physically strong. He is very physically capable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Still, he continues to experience challenges. \u201cHe\u2019s had effects to his speech and communication,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mitchell Collier is now two weeks into a brain injury rehabilitation program at Scripps Encinitas Rehabilitation Services. The program focuses on strength, coordination, speech, and everyday tasks, including cooking.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really a cool program. It\u2019s very intensive. Our kids call it daddy school,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Mitchell Collier is a Navy veteran who grew up in San Diego, where he met his wife at the age of 12. The two attended Morse High School together. She described him as her \u201cfirst crush,\u201d and after his time as a sailor, the two found themselves back together and married. They then moved to Hawaii, where he joined the Kauai Police Department and they had their first son. Sheena Collier said that\u2019s about when they decided to return home and Mitchell Collier joined the Port of San Diego Harbor Police in 2018.<\/p>\n
A job\u2014really more of an innate purpose\u2014he wants to get back to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s always been a protector,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s always been not only just physically strong, I think there’s just something, he feels he needs to watch over his loved ones and that translates to just watching over the people around him.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the support from family, friends and the community has been overwhelming, through check-ins, visits and fundraising. The Peace Officer Research Association of California (PORAC) recently launched a fundraising platform through the Fund a Hero initiative for the Collier family to help \u201cease the financial burdens caused by Officer Collier’s medical bills, recovery, and his wife’s Sheena\u2019s time away from work,\u201d according to the page<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think he realizes that what he contributed to his family, his friends and his community is now just being reciprocated to him,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Mitchell Collier has received life-saving awards during his time in uniform and, most recently, served as a field training officer with Harbor Police, mentoring the next generation of officers.<\/p>\n This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC San Diego. AI tools helped convert the story to a digital article, and an NBC San Diego journalist edited the article for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 42-year-old Navy veteran and Port of San Diego Harbor Police officer is recovering after a seizure led…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1570,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-101363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-health","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}