A New Year's Update

Happy New Year!!!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and hopefully we’ll all enjoy a happy and healthy new decade. Sorry for not keeping up with the updates. So much has been going on I haven’t had an opportunity to write. For everyone who hasn’t had the chance to get an update on Ellen, I’m happy to write that Ellen has made so much progress and is doing really well considering what the doctors thought her outcome may be. She awoke in mid December from being in a coma for about 2 months. Ellen has a loss of short term memory at times and has moments of confusion but overall knows and understands a lot. Her memory will come and go over the next year but should get better with time. Ellen was told by her therapists the details of her accident when she started to awake. It was very traumatic for her to comprehend what happened. Each day she battles with her emotions, still Ellen has made tremendous improvements and continues to fight. Her trach and the feeding tubes are out. Ellen is re-learning to eat on her own, walk on her own, read and write. She started with liquids and is now eating solid foods. She also started taking her first steps last week and is doing amazing. She’s working with therapists to read and write. When the therapists say she can’t do something, Ellen says she only wants to do it more and faster. She’s working and fighting extremely hard to get herself back to the Ellen we all know. Her voice and laugh is coming back and when we talk, I hear her personality come through. Some moments she’s in good spirits and other times she gets very sad and asks why me? I can’t even imagine how she feels. She says how hard it is to re-learn everything and be in a hospital for so long. She says we don’t know how it feels. She’s right and my heart breaks for her. I told her that we are all so proud of her and that she has made it this far because of her fight and her wanting to live. She has so many people praying for her full recovery and she is so grateful. The doctors are amazed at her progress. The doctors talked about her making a miraculous recovery. Ellen still has a long road ahead. We are still dealing with the one step forward two steps back brain injury recovery. About a month ago, an open bruise was found on the back of her head. Each Monday she gets transported to Nyack hospital and her doctor performs a painful procedure to clean the bruise and measures the bruise to see if it’s healing on its own. So far it is healing and plastic surgery is on hold. She has massive migraines every day, which is also common for brain injury survivors. Ellen has lost some of her vision and hearing. At this time the doctors do not know what the outcome will be. Ellen will have reconstructive surgery on her ear drum in February or March. This procedure should help with her hearing. Her right eye which was infected for quite some time is now half way open. Hopefully once it heals it’ll be fully open and will help with her vision. Ellen will be in rehabilitation for the next year and possibly longer. In the next couple of days, her doctors and therapists will be evaluating her progress and making a determination if she should be moved to a sub-acute rehabilitation facility. There aren’t many choices of local facilities and this is a tough decision for Ellen’s parents. Whatever the decision will be we just have to pray it’s the best decision and Ellen continues to make progress for a full recovery.