Neither Car Accident Nor Cancer Can Derail This Marathon Team

NEW YORK — Dan Levinsohn wanted to jog to Prospect Park, but the 2017 West Indian Day Parade blocked his usual running route, so the marathoner-in-training tried a new route. He ended up stepping into the crosswalk at the corner of Classon and Flushing avenues.

That's when car hit him from out of nowhere.

"I thought to myself, 'This is how I die,'" said Levinsohn, 29.

Two years later, Levinsohn is preparing to run his third New York City Marathon, in honor of his mom.

Levinsohn still remembers his mouth filling with the taste of metal and his nostrils with the smell of smoke. He remembers landing on his back, shattering his right shoulder, breaking three ribs and cracking three vertebrae.

"It must have been only three or four seconds," said Levinsohn, now an Upper West Side resident. "But it felt like an eternity."

The crash threatened to sideline Levinsohn from the race he had dreamed of running for years. But a NewYork-Presbyterian surgeon, his nurse mother and his own determination got him to the starting line just two months later.

Iris Levinsohn, who retired from NewYork-Presbyterian's Columbia University Irving Medical Center in September after more than three decades, is her marathon-running son's hero, he said. After caring for him and countless others, she's now battling cancer.

"I feel like this race is a celebration of her life, and that's what I'm going to be thinking about — how she has helped people through all five boroughs, maybe through all 50 states," Dan said.

"She's always been a fighter for the most vulnerable, and I want to fight my way through this race on her behalf," he added.

Pain and fear lay at the start of Dan's path to this year's marathon. He was first brought to a Brooklyn hospital with which Iris was unfamiliar. She called NewYork-Presbyterian's transfer center to see if Dan could be moved to her "home" hospital, where she knew he would get the best care.

Dr. William Levine, the hospital's chair of orthopedics, took Dan's case. He remembers being in "unbearable" pain as the ambulance took him up to Columbia in the early morning. His shoulder felt like it was exploding, he said, and he had lost all feeling in his hand.

Despite knowing he was in good hands at the hospital, Dan said he was "terrified" — so much so that he started screaming when he was wheeled into an operating room.

"I was fairly convinced in my state of mind at that time that I could just get on the subway and go back home," Dan said.

Levine performed a roughly three-hour surgery to repair Dan's broken and dislocated shoulder, putting the joint back in place and reassembling the cracked bones with a plate, screws and stitches.

But the procedure was the easy part, Levine said — the hard work would come in the weeks and months ahead as Dan healed and went through rehab.

"His right shoulder injury was about as bad an injury as you can have for lots of concerns of future use and function," Levine said. "... In an older patient, if you have that combination of injuries, you may very well go straight to doing a shoulder replacement."

Dan went from being in the "best shape of my life" before the crash to "really, really miserable" in the weeks afterward, he said. But he didn't want to give up on the race that had inspired him years before.

Dan had dropped out of New York University when he saw the marathon fireworks display from a bus in 2010. The display sparked something in him, he said, and he started running regularly.

"All these New Yorkers are facing a lot of the same struggles that I’m facing withinin the city. They're not sure where their careers are going," Dan said. "They have to deal with the subways and the expenses and the brutal weather and everything else. And yet they’re still committing themselves to this really incredible feat, and they’re doing it in what so many people consider the greatest city in the world. And it kind of inspired me to not give up on my dreams."

Dan completed his first 5K in 2013, followed by a half-marathon and the Atlantic City Marathon in 2015. The following year, he ran nine New York Road Runners races and volunteered at a 10th to secure a spot in the 2017 marathon.

Then came the crash, and the surgery, and the painful, largely sleepless nights that followed. Iris helped him keep up with his medications, he said. But he struggled with being unable to do much of anything — and his mom said he desperately wanted to run.

"Daniel was fixed on running this marathon," Iris, 68, said. "... He was so eager to get back to work and to get working on himself physically that he did run the marathon."

Eventually Dan asked Levine about running. The board-certified sports medicine doctor said it wasn't unsafe for Dan to try the marathon, albeit highly unlikely that he would finish.

But he was "singularly committed" to getting his shoulder better, Levine said. He finished that year's marathon in about four hours and six minutes roughly two months after the crash.

"That’s like a one in a million," Levine said. "... For him to do it at that time after that injury — there’s very few people on the face of this planet. Think about the pain that you would have with every step."

"If you wanna have a photo in intestinal fortitude and persistence and grit, all the things we talk about these days, Daniel’s your guy," he added.

Dan put up an even stronger time in the following year's marathon, finishing in fewer than four hours. And his relationship with Iris grew stronger, too.

"If there was any silver lining to this crash, it really showed to me how much my mom cared about me, how much she was willing to fight for me," he said. "... She was there for me when I was at my weakest."

But the Levinsohn family was rocked again this past March when Iris was diagnosed with cancer. A tumor doctors spotted a few months before turned malignant. She's now going through chemotherapy after three months of radiation treatment.

Dan was "thrown for a loop with this, and he wanted to support me and be there for me," said Iris, who lives in Oradell, New Jersey. He and his brother set out to "celebrate life" with her any chance they got, he said, getting her tickets to see the Rolling Stones and a photo book filled with hundreds of pictures.

Dan has also dedicated every race he's run since her diagnosis to his mother. This Sunday's marathon is no different, and she hopes to be there to cheer him on.

"It’s kind of scary when you don’t know the unknown, so I feel like it’s a wonderful tribute no matter what happens for me," Iris said. "... I’m going to run the race and I’m going to beat it, and I’m going to win. And I love that my son is there to support me."