Initial Injuries List
| Injury | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Broken C1 vertebrete (first neck bone down from the skull) | Completely Healed | She struggled and struggled with her cervical collar throughout her stay in the Span Rehab center. (And we struggled with her over it, literally!) When it finally came off, whew! |
| Snapped left collarbone | Completely Healed | The problem with the snapped collarbone is that while it was healing, her left arm curled up and basically died. See below... |
| Left arm/hand "died" while collarbone was healing | Maybe about 50% function | When she first got to rehab, after her six-week stay in the hospital, the arm was totally curled up, stiff against itself. They botoxed the muscle to get it to relax, but it was still curled up until one day at one of her rehab sessions I sat down with her and slowly massaged it and stretched it out flat. It took about twenty minutes to get it all the way flat, without any pain. Since then, she got a lot of therapy on it but its been very stubborn. We excercise it daily, and I make her use it as much as possible. |
| Broken ribs | Completely Healed | Just your garden-variety broken ribs. I never got the details on this, but I assume it has a lot to do with the collapsed lung/s, below |
| Both lungs collapsed (more like burst like baloons) | Completely Healed | One was collapsed at the scene and the other one collapsed at the hospital. |
| Chemical Pneumonia | Completely Healed | The impact caused her to vomit, and then she inhaled the vomit. This caused an infection which resulted in the pneumonia. They put her on this roto-tilt bed that tilted her back and forth I think about 40 degrees, which is a lot. They had the chest tubes in her sides, and two reservoirs that caught all the fluid. They'd fill up every day or two. Eventually her left side cleared up, then the right side about three days later If I remember correctly (which I probably don't). |
| Ruptured Bladder | Healed, but not completely | She's had accidents, and has to wear "Depends" type underwear. They recently put her back on FLOMAX to help with this. Initially she wanted to go to the bathroom literally every five minutes. And she couldnt remember having just gone. So it was a constant back-and-forth, and very frustrating when nothing would happen, even though she had the urge. Actually now that I think back on this, we actually had to catheterize her because she couldnt go at all. Eventually she regained the ability, but she still had constant urges, no memory of having just gone, etc. Now, its much better. First of all, she can make it to the bathroom on her own. And she only rarely has "false alarms" any more. Sorry if this was more information than you needed :P |
| Torn Liver | Completely Healed | The doctors were never much worried about this or the spleen. The wound was minor enough that there was no surgery required, etc. Healed up on their own. |
| Torn Spleen | Completely Healed | One can only imagine what sort of force it takes to "tear" an internal organ like this. But again, no worries here. |
| Pelvis snapped in two places | Completely Healed | If you look at the picture of the side of the Saturn, you can see how this happened. As I mentioned on the livejournal blog, there was just a few inches of room left on that side of the car, and that side of the car was pushed over to the other side as it was. Fortunately, the pelvis acts as its own "cradle" and it healed up basically on its own, too. |
| Tracheotomy wound/scar | Still has a big scar | I got her some "Band Aid" scar-reducing bandages. They seem to work, more or less. The scar is so big, it will take a while. The real damage was the trache's effect on her singing voice. See below. |
| Speech and Voice | Slow speech, jacked-up singing voice | This causes her some of the worst anguish, the loss of her singing voice. Her speaking voice is slow, and poorly modulated. Same with her singing voice. She's slow, and her pich varies up and down. We are working on this. She spends much of each day listening to music, and ideally singing along. She loves to sing along to the Beatles, and it generally always puts her in a good mood. Her mother signed her up for speech therapy classes (which I know Jenna's going to hate having to go to--but it will be good for her) that she starts next week (beginning first week of Feb. '05). |
| Head Injuries | Physically its all healed up | She still has a "shunt" valve doohickey implanted in the right side of her head in that "shallow" spot everyone has between the forehead area and the knobby area at the back/top. There is a drain tube that lets any excess intercranial fluid to drain down into her stomach. At the time she was admitted to the hospital, the right side of her head was cracked and the brain itself was awash in a sea of its own blood. In addition, the CT scan I saw showed massive tissue damage in the gray matter itself. Really, throughout the brain, there was no part of it that wasnt smashed and damaged. The brain vent they used, along with all the anti-inflamatories, kept additional damage from happening, especially as the tissue naturally swells up between 3-5 days after the initial injury. Her N/ICU nurses were absolutely heroic, wonderful professionals whom I'm privledged to say I have met. |
| "Intangible" Brain Injuries | We're working on these. | See the main index "blog" for our daily struggles with her memory, cognition, depression and anger. Way too much to say here... :) |
