{"id":24584,"date":"2025-10-31T21:22:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24584\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T21:22:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T21:22:07","slug":"alexa-casciano-and-christian-longo-to-run-the-nyc-marathon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/24584\/","title":{"rendered":"Alexa Casciano and Christian Longo to run the NYC Marathon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two young New Yorkers who overcame traumatic brain injuries<\/a> \u2014 including one who had to relearn how to walk \u2014 are using their new lease on life to run in Sunday\u2019s city marathon.<\/p>\n

Alexa Casciano, 24, and Christian Longo, 26, are both joining the beastly race <\/a>to benefit the Brain Injury Association of New York State in honor of other TBI victims who aren\u2019t able to make the 26.2-mile trek.<\/p>\n

Christian Longo and Alexa Casciano are traumatic-brain-injury survivors who are running this year\u2019s New York City Marathon. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ability to walk, I find that people take for granted. But we have legs, and we complain about how many flights of stairs and all that stuff,\u201d Longo said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are you complaining about things like that? You should be caring that your legs can handle climbing up those many stairs. Those are things that I always remind myself of because they really can always be worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Completing the New York City Marathon is especially groundbreaking for Longo, who needed to relearn how to walk, talk and \u201call the basics\u201d after he took a terrifying spill from a broken New Orleans balcony in April 2021.<\/p>\n

The then-Tulane University senior said he barely remembers anything about his three-story fall. <\/p>\n

His skull was the only bone he broke in his body \u2014 but his brain\u2019s subsequent epidural hematoma left him with a life-altering TBI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like a baby,\u201d said Longo, a Gramercy resident.<\/p>\n

The marathon is the first for Longo, but the second for Casciano. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

\u201cThe injury was on the right side of my head, which is in control of a lot of your cognitive abilities, like writing checks, what time it is, what year it is \u2026 even remembering, \u2018What\u2019s the word for this, what\u2019s the word for that?\u2019 \u201c<\/p>\n

Longo\u2019s TBI even prevented him from fully understanding the trauma he had gone through: In his mind, he was still functioning at 100%, even as he was struggling to communicate with his loved ones who were rallying alongside his hospital bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, I know I was dealing with so much and was not even a fraction of the person I\u2019ve been able to become today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Longo sustained a TBI when he fell from a third-story balcony in 2021. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

Running the marathon wasn\u2019t something Longo had considered before his accident, but he decided to put his mind and body to the test this year at the urging of his sister and biggest supporter, a woman named Julia.<\/p>\n

The duo has collectively raised nearly $7,000<\/a> to benefit BIANYS, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting, educating and advocating for people and families impacted by brain injury and minimizing brain injury through prevention.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I\u2019m doing it, it\u2019s not for me,\u201d Longo said of his upcoming run. \u201cIt\u2019s for everybody who really can\u2019t run a marathon, maybe somebody who\u2019s had a brain injury that\u2019s left them bound to a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

\u201cGod decided to give me a chance to do this. I\u2019m not going to squander it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Casciano suffered a TBI after she was diagnosed with Lumiere syndrome, an extremely rare bacterial infection. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

The sentiment is something Casciano, 24, can get behind.<\/p>\n

The TriBeCa resident has been living by the motto, \u201cDo it for those who can\u2019t\u201d while training for the athletic endeavor.<\/p>\n

Casciano\u2019s TBI stemmed from her 2018 diagnosis of Lumiere syndrome, an extremely rare bacterial infection that can typically be treated with antibiotics but nearly became a death sentence for the then-16-year-old.<\/p>\n

For unknown reasons, the infection rapidly spread to Casciano\u2019s lungs and brain. Within a 28-day span, she underwent double lung reconstruction surgery and emergency brain surgery.<\/p>\n

The pair are running to benefit the Brain Injury Association of New York State in honor of other TBI victims who aren\u2019t able to make the 26.2-mile trek. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

The disease left her with a titanium plating system in her brain that caused chronic, often debilitating headaches.<\/p>\n

But she also found new strength from her ordeal.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went through this experience, and I was really lucky to come out of it alive and healthy, but others were not. Keeping them in my mind and running on behalf of them is something incredibly important to me,\u201d Casciano said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a pretty transformational experience for me. \u2026 You only have one life, so make sure that you\u2019re doing everything that you want to do and taking every day as if it could be your last and really living life to the fullest,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The race will be the second for the pharmaceutical consultant, who completed the Los Angeles Marathon in March purely to train for the treacherous bridges scattered across the New York City race.<\/p>\n

Casciano continued training through the summer \u2014 even pushing through a 20-mile run just four days before she went back under the knife to finally alleviate those migraines she spent seven years suffering through.<\/p>\n

As with Longo, Casciano is running to benefit BIANYS and has already raised over $4,000.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI had gone through this experience of having brain surgery and recovering from it, but understanding that people are oftentimes not as lucky as I was to be able to really make a full recovery and have that experience, to be able to move forward and inspire others,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two young New Yorkers who overcame traumatic brain injuries \u2014 including one who had to relearn how to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[6551,9715,15853,15663,57,9,197,2790,56,63,65,64,6071,58],"class_list":["post-24584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-brains","tag-gramercy-park","tag-head-injuries","tag-marathons","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city-life","tag-new-york-city-marathon","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-tribeca","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}