In a flash, Alexander Bosnakis’s life changed. On a hot September afternoon three years ago, Bosnakis was cruising home down Blair Road in Mint Hill on a motorcycle he’d just finished building when a truck turned in front of him. Given no time to brake, he was tossed like a rag doll over the hood of the Ford F-150, thudding to the pavement several feet away.
Luckily, he doesn’t remember a thing about it.
Bosnakis’s list of injuries reads like an anatomy primer — which is fitting, since the senior biology major, who graduates on Saturday, plans to apply to medical schools in the spring.
“I had cerebral swelling and bleeding,” he says. “I broke my nose. I broke both wrists — I shattered my left wrist — broke both arms, broke my right leg, broke my left foot and broke both ankles, shattered my pelvis and broke my last vertebra.”
Bosnakis was in a coma for a month, had a stroke on his second day in the hospital, and, since his lungs had collapsed during the accident, contracted pneumonia.
It’s amazing he’s alive. “I wasn’t supposed to be,” he says.
Thanks to the efforts of teams of medical personnel and his own grit, Bosnakis somehow made it through, and today the only real effects he feels from the accident are lingering hip pain, a couple of barely noticeable mobility limitations and a renewed sense of purpose.
An indifferent student before his accident, Bosnakis was ready to make the most of his second chance. And boy did he need one.
“The highest grade I was getting before was like a C, if that,” he says. “I just didn’t take college seriously, and I wasn’t trying like I should have been.” He wound up on academic suspension for a semester and had just returned to class when the accident happened.
But the wreck awakened something in Bosnakis, who became an A/B student. He will graduate with a biology degree and a minor in psychology, receiving his diploma along with 116 other undergraduates at Wingate’s fall Commencement on Saturday. In addition, 150 graduate students will earn degrees at the ceremony, which begins at 10 a.m. in Cuddy Arena.
None will be more thankful to receive their diploma than Bosnakis, who first enrolled at Wingate in 2016, after graduating from nearby Piedmont High School. After struggling academically early on, he now has grand plans: He’ll spend the next few months studying for the Medical College Admission Test, which he hopes to take in the spring, with the intention of going to medical school in the fall of 2023.
“When I came back, I was basically a different student,” he says.
The accident was like a slap in the face that made him reassess his life.
“You realize the beauty of life and how much you take for granted,” he says. ‘I can’t get that time back when I was being stupid in school and not taking it seriously. I regret it, but I believe everything happens for a reason. I think I’m better suited for my future than I was before. I don’t think I would have a chance to make it into med school with my old mentality.”
After two and a half years of surgeries, Bosnakis also has a good idea of what he wants to do with a medical degree: become a surgeon. He credits his orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Madhav Karunakar, with getting him back to full health. Bosnakis is left-handed, and, his left wrist having been shattered, lack of mobility there could have wreaked havoc on his future.
“I have more than enough mobility to write and do everything I was doing before,” he says. “Dr. Karunakar was even surprised when he took all the hardware off.”
Bosnakis had to learn to walk (his gait is different now, thanks to a fused left foot), and he had to relearn some cognitive skills, having suffered the stroke. Even today, his brain occasionally has to search a while to find the right word, but for the most part he’s returned to normal, with all of his memories (except of the accident) restored.
“He’s overcome some traumatic experiences but has a very positive attitude and very positive mindset,” says Dr. Matt Davis, who taught Bosnakis in the fall of 2021 in Psychology 303: Learning and Memory. “Things aren’t perfect for him now, but he’s still in that process of recovery, and the fact that he can persist as a biology major is a good testament to his internal fortitude.”
Bosnakis underwent surgery after surgery, even after he’d returned to the classroom. Because of the long road back to physical health, he needed the personal care afforded by a Wingate education to help him do an academic about-face.
“I knew what I had to do, and I was motivated to do it,” Bosnakis says. “My whole mental state was much different when I came back. A lot of my professors really helped me out, because I was still going through surgeries, and they were being very considerate. They cared.”
