A severe brain injury has not slowed down Michael Murren
By Paul Guzzo, University Communications and Marketing
“Avocado toast bucket.”
The phrase probably sounds like gibberish to everyone but Michael Murren.
To him, that odd expression means that almost anything is possible through hard work and determination.
After a 2018 car wreck left him with a traumatic brain injury, “Avocado toast bucket” became his unintentional catchphrase — the words that tumbled out whenever his brain couldn’t find the right ones.
“I guess it sounded good to me,” he said with a laugh. “But it meant nothing, especially when I wanted to say I had to go to the bathroom.”
Doctors once said he’d never live independently.
He proved them wrong.
This month, the 25-year-old will earn his bachelor of science degree in accountancy and head to New York City to work for Deloitte, a global professional services company specializing in audit, consulting, tax and advisory.
“I know it sounds cliché, but you need to just keep going,” Murren said. “Don’t ever give up.”
At the time of the crash, Murren already had a history of concussions from freak accidents in youth sports.
“Enough where I lost track,” he said. “I actually stopped playing after 10th grade because of it. I quit playing soccer. I quit skateboarding. I quit surfing. I was limiting anything that could cause another."
Michael Murren [Photo by Andres Faza, University Communications and Marketing]
Then, while driving home during his freshman year at Eastern Florida State College, a car cut in front of the Melbourne resident.
The collision sent his car over the curb and into a ditch.
“The last thing I remember is the airbag going off, the smell of my car on fire and thinking, ‘Oh, this is bad,’” Murren said. “Then I woke up in the hospital, and my mom was there.”
Due to a traumatic brain injury, he was diagnosed with aphasia, a language disorder that affects a person’s ability to communicate, making it difficult to speak, understand, read or write.
“The most frustrating part is that you have no idea that what you are saying is wrong,” Murren said. “‘Avocado toast bucket,’ to me, sounded like, ‘I need to use the bathroom.’”
He had physical impairments too.
For months, Murren threw up three to 10 times a day. He was so sensitive to light that windows had to be blacked out. And the left side of his body was so damaged that the lefty had to learn to be right-handed.
“Eventually, I was able to use my left side again,” he said. “But it took a while.”
After months in the hospital, once home, Murren did little to prove he could one day live independently.
Michael Murren has a real hunger for life
“I would do things like trying to grab hot things out of the oven with my bare hands,” he said. “I just couldn’t seem to remember right from wrong. My parents were planning on me living with them or other family for the rest of my life.”
But he refused to give up.
“Whatever the physical therapists wanted me to do, I did that and then some,” Murren said. “If they told me to do three sets of 10 of something, I’d keep doing sets until I couldn’t move or until I threw up.”
He applied the same dedication to mental exercises, sometimes spending hours reading the same page or even the same sentence repeatedly until his brain retained the information.
A year-and-a-half after the accident, Murren returned to Eastern Florida State College, which was located near his parents.
“I wasn’t fully recovered yet,” he said. “I just wanted to see if I was able to actually retain information. My mom would drop me off, and by the end of the day I wouldn’t know who my mom was or why I was on campus. But I kept pushing and was able to build my brain back up to the point I was getting straight A’s.”
Michael Murren was one of MUMA's "Top 25 Under 25"
In 2022, Murren transferred to USF, where he became a member of Beta Alpha Psi, Beta Gamma Sigma and Phi Theta Kappa – all college honor societies, while also volunteering at Pizzo Elementary School. There, he helps special needs children with their studies and seeks to serve as an inspiration.
“There was one girl at Pizzo who I’ll never forget,” Murren said. “She told me, ‘Nobody really gets me.’ I told her, ‘But you get to go to school, you get to do things — and that’s amazing. Just because your life doesn’t match up with someone else’s doesn’t mean it’s over. “Everyone’s life is different. My life is different from yours, and yours is different from someone else’s, and that’s okay.’”
His advice to anyone facing obstacles remains simple: “Believe in yourself.”
And, of course, “Avocado toast bucket.”