Please forgive the length of this post. But some stories cannot be told briefly. I hope it offers the parents some comfort.
My daughter, when age 21 eleven years ago, received a massive head injury in a hit and run. Let me tell you some of the things I have learned.
Doctors deal in norms. Given the evidence at hand they make educated predictions on outcomes. They can be wrong.
The first paramedic on the scene still checks in with us from time to time. He told me that he took her vital signs and said to his partner, "she will not make it to the ER."
The doctors in the NICU said that they could give us no prognosis for her survival.
She contacted antibiotic resistant pneumonia. I was advised twice to let her go.
As she lay in a coma, my wife began taking materials of various texture to the hospital and rubbing them on Kim's hands (balloons, sandpaper, silk fabric, etc.) We also kept a headset on her, playing various types of music. One dotor told my wife that we were being foolish, that what we saw right then was all she would ever be. My wife responded, "apparently you don't know the same God that we do."
She eventually opened her eyes but lay motionless in a constant, blank stare. I began holding my hand in front of her eyes and slowly opening and closing my fingers. Sometime I would move her her fingers also. After days of this, one day I thought I saw an occasional twitch in her left hand, timed to my hand motions. The doctors dismissed this as involuntary reflexes and any timing as being coincidence.
she developed bad acne, and my last act every day after spending the day with her at the nursing home was to apply medication. One day I did one side of her face and instead of turning her face to the other side I said, "Kim, turn your head." And she did!
A few days later as an experiment I wrote a large note telling her to look at the door. She flopped her head and looked at it! Then a note for the window. Then the TV. Then the bathroom.
She responded correctly each time. She could still read!
Her progress became more rapid. In a few weeks she could move her hand enough to spell out messages to us on a child's toy alphabet board. They fitted her with a wheelchair that totally supported her body and head, and we became mobile. In a month that chair was obsolete and she had enough body support to start using a regular chair. We started therapy visits back to the hospital. She had lessons on getting in and out of bed, walking with a walker, etc., with little or no progress.
While at he nursing home, she finally had her trach removed, something we had previously been told could never happen. We had also been told she would always have to have the feeding tube in her stomach. She pulled that out herself on the day we brought her home from the nursing home. Doctors reluctantly agreed to let us feed her pureed food by mouth. She gradually worked her way to solid food, something else we were told would never happen because of her severe awallowing problems.
About this time I developed the notion that we were going to place unreasonable demands on her brain and force it to respond. Maybe a crazy notion, I don't know. However, I began lifting her to a standing position and letting her go, having to catch her over and over. After a week or so of this, she began to stand on her own for brief moments. The day she stood independently for 15 minutes I declared that battle won. I began trying to push her off balance and soon her body was successfully resisting. Then I started having her lift one leg and put it back down. In two weeks she could do either leg without falling. Then we started attempting single steps. Soon she could keep her balance while doing one, then two, then three.
We went to the speech therapy department at a local college, which dimissed her after two semesters telling us that due to her lack of progress it would be unethical to continue to hold out hope. We started our own therapy. When we were alone in the car we would have yell practice to develop her lungs. I would make up silly voice exercises as a game.
Today, eleven years later, she lives alone at her choice in an independent living facility. She makes her bed, does her own laundry, can prepare meals when she chooses, walks (although awkwardly) speaks well enough to converse on he phone. She is plagued by short-term memory problems. The people over on the Busse forum know her well from our annual Blade Show trips. So does Chris Reeve, Darryl Ralph, Bobby Branton, Kenny Young, Mark Seitz, and many others.
Each head injury seems to me to be a law unto itself. I know of a girl with injuries similar to Kim's who made a short-term miraculous recovery and now seems totally normal. I know of a girl with seemingly lesser injuries who still lies in a vegetative state after several years.
My advice to any parent in our situation would be to not be passive. Patiently wait for progress, but not in idleness. Try to make it happen. It may not happen. But it may. And pray, pray, pray. Sometimes I wonder if God was amused by my efforts, if He said, "Well, we'll let him feel useful while I do it all." Would Kim be where she is today with only the passage of healing time? Maybe.
