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This has to go somewhere- and the computer was closest to me right now o.0~
My family has always been really close- and about a year and a half ago one of my mom's sisters and her family moved to Georgia because my uncle got a job transfer that was a great opportunity for them.
My 15-year-old cousin hannah was waiting for the bus Two weeks ago Monday- when a car stopped to turn left into a subdivision. A Jeep Cherokee being driven a 17 year old boy came up behind that one too fast- and swerved to miss the stopped car. He over-corrected and ran up onto the sidewalk- running over a fire hydrant, cable box and then hitting my cousin and another boy.
On the scene she wasn't breathing- her eyes were dialated and unresponsive and she was life-lighted to a hospital in Atlanta and put into the ICU. She has three breaks in her pelvic bone, a broken wrist and severe brain trauma that includes injuries to her left frontal lobe, brain stem, and cerebellum. She was in a coma, and the hospital gave her fentynal to keep her asleep. I flew out to georgia two days later to start taking the night shift so my aunt and uncle could at least attempt to get some sleep.
Hannah was in a dark room in a corner of the ICU unit, with a halo of equipment circling her. A black eye, face and body swollen so much she didn't look like herself.... Three different lines into her arm, a ventilator, tubes in her nose, and a tube coming out of her head that measured her inter-cranial pressure because her ventricles had blood in them and her brain was swollen.
They took her off the sleep meds after five days, and she started to stir on the seventh- movements of someone in a deep sleep- occasionally her eyes would crack open just enough to see blue slits between her lashes, but they moved back and forth tracking invisible items in the room. I stayed up with her- watching inter-cranial pressure- occasionally it would jump too high and she needed more medication, or her oxygen would drop too low and the ventilator needed to be increased. The nights seemed surprisingly rapid- I would come in about 9, and at 4am, the techs came by for morning rounds- every day she had CT scans of her head to check the blood and damage, as well as x-rays of her chest to monitor the fluid in her lungs and the resulting infection said fluid caused. The nurses drew new blood at 5, did general maintenance - and by 9, someone was usually there to relieve me.
She woke up the ninth day, and by "awake" I mean her eyes were more than half open and what little movements she made she lolled around like someone extremely intoxicated, or completely trashed on some drug. She would sleep for and hour, be awake for 45 minutes- I spent the nights rambling to her when she was awake, keeping her attention away from the monitors in her room and tubes coming out of her. The nurses had to tie her arms down to keep her from trying to pull it all out in her scared stupor- but talking to her about mundane things like the new stores in the mall and rubbing her legs at least seemed to help keep her calm.
When I was at the house one afternoon, unsuccessfully trying to rest before going to be up with hannah, a woman returned the things that were with her at the accident- her shoes somehow were more horrible than seeing her in ICU- Seeing them anchored the situation more into reality- maybe because a couple months ago i had seen her and we had gone shopping and bought her those shoes. Little silver flats with white sneaker toes- one of them was scraped and peeled up across the top of the toe- the side frayed from scraping the concrete. The other was shredded on the bottom and heel, dirt and bits of leaves compacted onto the side. I just stared at them after the woman left, cheery sunlight streaming through the open front door.
Two days later her eyes were focusing - the doctors determined that she was out of the critical danger zone. They removed the ventilator, bolt in her head (seven staples for that) then moved her into the inpatient Rehab facility that specializes in head trauma cases. Once she was awake enough we learned she could still write, although her neat handwriting looks like a small child's- and often travels away from the lines. It was amazing- her comments were still playful and her vocabulary nearly intact. It meant that hannah was still herself inside.
The pieces of her brain injured affect her coordination, balance, abstract thinking, facial muscles, speech, and short term memory. She has diffused axonal injuries- it's when the axons in your brain get sheared in half, leaving the brain unable to communicate with parts of the body. Sometimes it is just reduced communication, other times a complete loss. Meaning- she can't walk or sit up without assistance, her face is in a constant poker expression, she is mute and her short term memory isn't logging things properly.
Every day she doesn't know where she is or why, sometimes she will remember things for a couple hours- other times she doesn't know what she did 15 minutes ago. She can't process more than two or three short sentences at at time right now- and if more than one person is talking she may miss everything all together because her brain can't figure out what it needs to filter out. The doctors think that with therapy through the summer- in six months she will seem mostly normal again. full recovery will take a year or two.
It all seemed so unreal- from the moment i heard that morning until two days ago... I haven't cried yet over it- the whole experience was literally mind-numbing. But it broke my heart to watch her the other day in therapy- they gave her 10 colored blocks to put in a zigzag pattern- and she couldn't do it. This is a girl who was making straight A's in advanced classes. She wasn't just booksmart- she was clever and quick-witted.
She has moments where she knows something is wrong- she's asked a couple times if something is wrong with her head, her eyes get watery when she tries to speak and can't hardly move her mouth. I can't even fathom what that must be like- or what her parents must feel when they can't magically make everything go away. We are blessed that she even survived- the first day or two the doctors weren't certain.
I know she will recover with time- but the fact that she is even having to go through this- that at the best she will lose six months. Who knows how she will feel about driving- she has her license- but wasn't driving much yet because she kept saying she was worried she would get distracted and might hurt someone.
My cousin is staying with her at night now that his classes are over, and I am going home tomorrow. It still doesn't seem entirely real- and i'm not sure that it ever will.
My family has always been really close- and about a year and a half ago one of my mom's sisters and her family moved to Georgia because my uncle got a job transfer that was a great opportunity for them.
My 15-year-old cousin hannah was waiting for the bus Two weeks ago Monday- when a car stopped to turn left into a subdivision. A Jeep Cherokee being driven a 17 year old boy came up behind that one too fast- and swerved to miss the stopped car. He over-corrected and ran up onto the sidewalk- running over a fire hydrant, cable box and then hitting my cousin and another boy.
On the scene she wasn't breathing- her eyes were dialated and unresponsive and she was life-lighted to a hospital in Atlanta and put into the ICU. She has three breaks in her pelvic bone, a broken wrist and severe brain trauma that includes injuries to her left frontal lobe, brain stem, and cerebellum. She was in a coma, and the hospital gave her fentynal to keep her asleep. I flew out to georgia two days later to start taking the night shift so my aunt and uncle could at least attempt to get some sleep.
Hannah was in a dark room in a corner of the ICU unit, with a halo of equipment circling her. A black eye, face and body swollen so much she didn't look like herself.... Three different lines into her arm, a ventilator, tubes in her nose, and a tube coming out of her head that measured her inter-cranial pressure because her ventricles had blood in them and her brain was swollen.
They took her off the sleep meds after five days, and she started to stir on the seventh- movements of someone in a deep sleep- occasionally her eyes would crack open just enough to see blue slits between her lashes, but they moved back and forth tracking invisible items in the room. I stayed up with her- watching inter-cranial pressure- occasionally it would jump too high and she needed more medication, or her oxygen would drop too low and the ventilator needed to be increased. The nights seemed surprisingly rapid- I would come in about 9, and at 4am, the techs came by for morning rounds- every day she had CT scans of her head to check the blood and damage, as well as x-rays of her chest to monitor the fluid in her lungs and the resulting infection said fluid caused. The nurses drew new blood at 5, did general maintenance - and by 9, someone was usually there to relieve me.
She woke up the ninth day, and by "awake" I mean her eyes were more than half open and what little movements she made she lolled around like someone extremely intoxicated, or completely trashed on some drug. She would sleep for and hour, be awake for 45 minutes- I spent the nights rambling to her when she was awake, keeping her attention away from the monitors in her room and tubes coming out of her. The nurses had to tie her arms down to keep her from trying to pull it all out in her scared stupor- but talking to her about mundane things like the new stores in the mall and rubbing her legs at least seemed to help keep her calm.
When I was at the house one afternoon, unsuccessfully trying to rest before going to be up with hannah, a woman returned the things that were with her at the accident- her shoes somehow were more horrible than seeing her in ICU- Seeing them anchored the situation more into reality- maybe because a couple months ago i had seen her and we had gone shopping and bought her those shoes. Little silver flats with white sneaker toes- one of them was scraped and peeled up across the top of the toe- the side frayed from scraping the concrete. The other was shredded on the bottom and heel, dirt and bits of leaves compacted onto the side. I just stared at them after the woman left, cheery sunlight streaming through the open front door.
Two days later her eyes were focusing - the doctors determined that she was out of the critical danger zone. They removed the ventilator, bolt in her head (seven staples for that) then moved her into the inpatient Rehab facility that specializes in head trauma cases. Once she was awake enough we learned she could still write, although her neat handwriting looks like a small child's- and often travels away from the lines. It was amazing- her comments were still playful and her vocabulary nearly intact. It meant that hannah was still herself inside.
The pieces of her brain injured affect her coordination, balance, abstract thinking, facial muscles, speech, and short term memory. She has diffused axonal injuries- it's when the axons in your brain get sheared in half, leaving the brain unable to communicate with parts of the body. Sometimes it is just reduced communication, other times a complete loss. Meaning- she can't walk or sit up without assistance, her face is in a constant poker expression, she is mute and her short term memory isn't logging things properly.
Every day she doesn't know where she is or why, sometimes she will remember things for a couple hours- other times she doesn't know what she did 15 minutes ago. She can't process more than two or three short sentences at at time right now- and if more than one person is talking she may miss everything all together because her brain can't figure out what it needs to filter out. The doctors think that with therapy through the summer- in six months she will seem mostly normal again. full recovery will take a year or two.
It all seemed so unreal- from the moment i heard that morning until two days ago... I haven't cried yet over it- the whole experience was literally mind-numbing. But it broke my heart to watch her the other day in therapy- they gave her 10 colored blocks to put in a zigzag pattern- and she couldn't do it. This is a girl who was making straight A's in advanced classes. She wasn't just booksmart- she was clever and quick-witted.
She has moments where she knows something is wrong- she's asked a couple times if something is wrong with her head, her eyes get watery when she tries to speak and can't hardly move her mouth. I can't even fathom what that must be like- or what her parents must feel when they can't magically make everything go away. We are blessed that she even survived- the first day or two the doctors weren't certain.
I know she will recover with time- but the fact that she is even having to go through this- that at the best she will lose six months. Who knows how she will feel about driving- she has her license- but wasn't driving much yet because she kept saying she was worried she would get distracted and might hurt someone.
My cousin is staying with her at night now that his classes are over, and I am going home tomorrow. It still doesn't seem entirely real- and i'm not sure that it ever will.
Current Location: Georgia.
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artistic
feverihs
