Traumatic Brain Injury in 1996

     
From Valedictorian of her high school class...to well-known radio DJ...to traumatic head injury, University Hospital, Children's Hospital, Neurological Rehab, and marriage......

Our 19 year-old daughter was in a very serious car accident January 2nd, 1996 and the Lord saved her life. Here is a brief summary of those events and how she truly is a miracle child. 

This blog is a compilation of thoughts, memories, and diary entries from my wife and I, hence the variation in narrative form.

When her Chevy Cavalier was broadsided by a Ford Bronco, she suffered a "traumatic brain injury" better known as a TBI...her brain actually shook and rattled inside her entire skull creating extreme (and as the doctors said, 'catastrophic') diffuse damage to the brain caused by it being rattled around within the skull. Imagine being a parent and being told your daughter has suffered a 'catastrophic brain injury'. She also incurred a punctured lung and a broken collar bone. Because of icy road conditions, helicopter transport was "out, and ambulance took her to the nearest University Hospital, 150 miles from the accident. She had virtually quit breathing, so remained on a ventilator at University Hospital for two and a half weeks; being in a coma for twelve days. We had no cellphones, only the hospital phone booth..and calling relatives with news of the accident was not easy. I was so upset my fingers slipped in the dial and had to leave all the calling to the wife. She ended up handling all the phone calls; incoming and outgoing. I slept on the floor of the emergency room for six nights...people were coming and going all night long, gunshots, fights, murders. I remember sharing the Gospel with a Mexican family in the middle of the night. And I remember a preacher coming in and shouting "Does anyone here need a miracle?"

I remember hundreds of her friends came to visit her; many from her college sorority. Nearly all of them would just 'stand there' and stare. Very few would do anything but occupy space. I can remember talking to her constantly, reading scriptures, talking of events, places, people. Touching her face, arms, feet...literally anything that would be likely to stimulate her mind. At one point, I asked the visitors to please speak aloud, talk of familiar events, in hopes the stimulus would help her come out of this coma.....

Psalms 23:4 frequently went through my mind "...Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me..."I can remember emphasizing the "valley", as this was, indeed, a 'valley-of-the-shadow-of-death' and not death itself. We knew that she would be made whole.

She took her first breath on her own in between ventilator breaths on the fifth day (still in coma)...and woke up from the coma on the twelfth day. She developed a bad staff infection during the first month so she was in neuro intensive care for three weeks before being moved out of NICU.

One week later she was moved to Children's Hospital, where she remained for two and a half months. At first, she went through an awful period of 'agitation'. We thought she was trying to ride a bicycle...but the constant leg 'peddling' movements (day and night for days and days) were only a neurological response to the brain's healing. When this 'agitation' period ended, she began more therapy -- physical, occupational and speech. When we first arrived at Childrens, they told us they even had a 'gym'! Wow, I thought..a gym? Do they play basketball, etc? Little did I realize that the 'gym' was a room full of beach balls and other stretching tools for decreasing the body's 'tone', to help return the drawn-up arms into a normal 'range-of-motion', even using serial-casting (progressively changing casts on her arms and feet to help combat the tone that was drawing her up to the fetal position). She had to be taught everything all over again. I remember the speech therapist coming every day with her 'odor kit', little bottles of all kinds of smells designed to stimulate the brain.

She started talking on her father's birthday ( February twenty third), which thrilled him, and started eating solid foods the first part of March (up till now she was getting formula thru a stomach tube). At Children's, we were able to stay twenty four hours-a-day with her for those two and a half months. We lived at Children's hospital. The 4th floor was our home for nearly three months. I can remember wheeling her around the entire hospital. I'd push her around every floor, take all the elevators, even push her through basement passageways. She loved 'Dr. Pepper', and as her recovery progressed, I'd push her up to the Dr. Pepper machine in the hallway and she'd mumble "Dudda purper, dudda perper!" while moving her right index finger towards the machine. When the therapists wheeled in a vertical body-stretching machine, she'd point at it and exclaim 'get that contraption outa here!' And oh, I remember the big beach balls...I am sure she delighted in having to stretch on those. Later, she'd stare at photos on the wall of her radio DJ studio, her basketball games, and school activities and burst into tears, crying "I want my life back".....

After extensive rehab there, she left  Children's in a wheelchair the middle of April and entered a neurological rehab center an hour's drive further west  for post-acute rehab. The Lord provided a rent-free home for my wife about twenty miles from the ranch so she could be with her as much as they would allow -- which was quite abit. I returned to work, after living in the hospital all this time. Within three weeks of entering the neuro rehab center, our daughter was using a walker (this is May) and by June was using a cane. By the end of July, she was walking on her own. At the end of June, she went to "phase three" (independence) -- she had to be able to bathe, dress, make her bed, and do her laundry. She had other chores as well...like share in the meal planning and making...even drivers "re-training". She got to go to the movies and shopping and come home on weekends. She was discharged from  on October eleventh. ..and has come a long way, but still has a long way to go.

UPDATE as of May 9, 1997 She's sharing an apartment with her Mom and a girlfriend while she takes out-patient therapy 5 days a week, and also is taking one class at the state university she had been in at the time of her wreck..

UPDATE as of August 4th, 1997 our daughter is now on her own.....she is now able to drive...and she has purchased a new Chevy S-10 pickup.

UPDATE as of December 1997 She had her broken shoulder fixed....will be wearing a sling for another couple weeks. She now lives at home with us. Continues to improve...but a head injury takes many, many months and even years to heal. She is now starting to write better with her right hand.

UPDATE as of April, 1998 Collarbone now healed. She's back to driving again.....trying to find work. Has applied at Walmart, etc. Please keep us in your prayers.

UPDATE as of December 1998 thank God for Walmart...she's been working in one since this past summer, has found a wonderful boyfriend, who also works there, and is now ENGAGED to him! they plan to be married after he has a couple years of college.

UPDATE as of January 2001 She has moved into her OWN apartment!

UPDATE as of February 2004 She's married!!!!!!

Thank you for all your prayers...and may the Lord Jesus Christ bless you every day, especially in your times of needs...as he has during ours...which continue on a daily basis.

NOTE: She is a favorite of all the customers in the Walmart store...and is not shy in her witness of the Lord Jesus Christ................

View the video at She Didn't Ask For January 2nd 1996