Five years ago today my daughter Shannon fell in her kitchen in Florida and was severely injured when her head hit the marble floor and perhaps the marble countertop on her way down. Her fall, unexplained to this day, resulted in a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and a broken cervical vertebra. Because of a major brain bleed ER doctors told her husband Rick and their son Ryan that Shannon had “zero chance of surviving the night”. When Rick insisted that they try something<\/em> they gave him the long shot option of transferring her to another nearby hospital in Orlando with better facilities and with personnel that were more experienced in handling such severe brain injuries. He jumped at the chance.<\/p>\n I was on the next available plane to Florida, preparing myself during the entire long flight for the very real possibility that Shannon would be dead when I got off the plane. She wasn’t but for most of the eleven days I was there it was touch and go. When I arrived she’d had a craniotomy where surgeons had removed the entire bony skull cap on her left side, she was on a ventilator and she was in a neck brace to stabilize her broken neck. There are more gory details but I’ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n Finally, one full week after the accident, we heard the words from one of Shannon’s primary doctors we’d been hoping to hear when he told us “Shannon will survive” but he gave us no false hopes about how much she’d recover. She might never be able to walk or talk again and even her eyesight was on the line.<\/p>\n I was at the hospital most of every day I was there so when they were finally able to wean her off the respirator (a dicey maneuver to say the least) one of my goals was to check out her cognitive status. She couldn’t really talk and her peripheral vision was impacted but she could see so over several days I would ask her questions and she would attempt to write down answers to them.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I saved one of her ‘answer sheets’ and found it again two days ago. The only words on it I can read with confidence are “Thank you dad”.<\/p>\n After her recovery Shannon became fascinated by her many weeks in the hospital, much of which she has absolutely no memory of, so yesterday in honor of her ‘anniversary’ I sent her a copy of the answer sheet. She was delighted to get more of the blanks of her hospital stay filled in.<\/p>\n There were many heroes involved in Shannon’s eventual recovery including doctors, nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other specialists, Ryan and Shannon herself but for me two stand out – her husband Rick and her mother Mary Lee.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is our little family in about 1975 – Shannon, Mary Lee and yours truly. Mary Lee and I were divorced decades ago.<\/p>\n At the time of Shannon’s accident Mary Lee was on a cruise to South America but on the day I left for home she arrived in Florida to help with Shannon. Despite the fact that she lived in Nevada at the time she stayed with Shannon, Rick and Ryan in Florida for about six months to help with Shannon’s extremely slow and complicated recovery. All of us will be forever grateful to Mary Lee for her extraordinary contributions, some of which continue to this day because Rick and Shannon now live in Nevada close to Mary Lee.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is Shannon and myself in my back yard 14 months ago. I haven’t seen her since then because of the damn virus.<\/p>\n In the five years since the accident Shannon’s recovery has been almost complete. Her only lingering symptom of any significance is a relatively minor issue with short term memory which she has creative strategies to compensate for.<\/p>\n Before the accident she was an independent soul almost to a fault so one of the things she really missed during her five year recovery was driving. Shannon and Rick both agreed that she’d never drive again unless and until her recovery was complete enough that there’d be no question that she could drive safely. A couple of months ago she was finally certified safe to drive so once again she’s behind the wheel which delights her to no end.<\/p>\n In case you can’t tell I’m proud of my daughter and grateful to everyone involved in her recovery.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sorry folks, no birds today. Today’s post is personal.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/shannons-writing-in-hospital.jpg\" "\\"shannons-writing-in-hospital\\"")
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