Four years ago

Four years ago, on April 14, 2009, Brenna began her journey through brain injury recovery with a concussion caused by an inattentive young driver, hitting us in the rear end of the pickup, and totaling us out. Brenna spent four days in the hospital without the admitting neurologist ever darkening her hospital door to see her again. She did see him for a follow up a month later, but he never checked her brain again, nor did he caution me to carefully monitor her, that the "simple" concussion could have drastic consequences.

Brenna's vision began to change. She lost her depth perception and one day, laid down the keys and never drove again. When I discovered that she was working on her class assignments, with words on her monitor increased to only 3-4 words at a time, and she was using only one eye for reading, I took her to a doctor. No wonder her assignments took her so long. No wonder she was so frustrated at team mates who did incomplete work, leaving her to polish the assignment and in some cases, complete what they should have done!

Her left retina was completely detached. Four surgeries later, there was nothing more to do with the eye. The retina could not be fixed. Twenty four hours later, my only beloved child was comatose. The doctors gave me no answers. In my heart, I am not sure they looked really hard. They assured me Brenna did not have a heart attack, stroke, hemorrhage, or aneurysm, or anything that the average person would know to ask. Nor did they tell me that a hospital with a brain injury trauma center was less than 5 miles away. The doctor said there was nothing more for Brenna.

My little girl struggled for 16 months to recover in a broken health care system that is not designed for the recovery of a person with a hypoxic-anoxic injury. She was a person, a human being who deserved much better than she received at the hands of the system, a system that has been declining for the last 30 years. She wasn't a vegetable and she wasn't a warehouse of spare parts.

In her honor, I am establishing Brenna's Hope Foundation, waiting to hear from the IRS for their approval. In her honor, I speak on behalf of others so that change can come in how people with a brain injury are rehabilitated. In her honor, I am working on a project that I cannot announce yet that will give me a foot in the door to not only educate others about Brenna's journey, but also to encourage and inspire those who can made a difference to do so.

It all began in 2009 with a concussion. I cannot let her journey end.

God bless and thanks to all for your support and encouragement over these past years. Brenna would want you to know she is grateful to each of you.

Pam, Brenna's proud mother