The Long Road To Recovery...

Well, what a year it's been for our family! Exactly one year ago today (October 7, 2008), my sister Tracy Ketchum (then 17 - now 18) was in a near-fatal car accident East of Lancaster. It had rained really hard that morning, and on her way to school, she ended up hydroplaning and going sideways down the road. She eventually ended up losing control of the car and it rolled a couple of times before coming to rest up on its side in a pretty deep drainage ditch. We later found out that several people had drove past the scene without even knowing that she was there, so it's very hard to tell exactly how long she would have been there if a truck driver from Glenwood Elevator hadn't seen the accident and immediately called it in to dispatch. My sister, Carrie Orr (who drives the headstart bus) came upon the scene of the accident, so she called one of her co-workers to bring her car and come and get the headstart children and the bus and take them on into the Glenwood center while leaving her car at the scene so that she could stay there until they got Tracy out of the car. Well, unfortunately, extraction took a while. Tracy was driving a Buick Century, and the doors automatically lock after reaching a certain speed, so as a result, all the doors were locked with the windows up. The fire department still had not managed to get into the vehicle by the time the Schuyler County ambulance arrived on the scene, so Michelle Fry (EMT) took it upon herself to bust out the windshield and enter the vehicle that way.

So, after finally getting in the vehicle, they stabilized her and finally extracted her from the car. They had to open and stabilize her airway, and they knew by her symptoms that she had sustained a severe head injury and that due to the position she was in that she was deprived of oxygen to the brain for an unknown amount of time. Before you ask, yes she was wearing her seat belt, but it was the model that came out of the door, and while it kept her from flying forward, it offered absolutely no support from side to side. So, the ambulance departed for Kirksville, where my mom was already at work (she drives one of the OATS buses), so she met Tracy at the hospital. Almost immediately upon arriving at Kirksville, the staff there decided that she needed more help than they could provide, so they decided to transfer her to University Hospital in Columbia. Due to her condition, they requested life-flight, but due to the continuing bad weather (rain & fog), they were unable to fly. So, they ended up transferring her via the trauma ambulance instead. In the meantime, my sister (Carrie) and my step-dad arrived at Kirksville to get mom and they all departed for Columbia.

However during all this, they had forgot to call me and tell me what was going on. The way that I found out was I received a text from my cousin while I was at work that read "Grandma just told me about Tracy, when you know how she is let me know". I was like what the heck is going on, so I called my sister (Carrie) and said what's going on, I just got a strange text, at which point they filled me in and said that it's bad and that they would get back with me when they knew more.

When they arrived at Columbia, as you can imagine, it was to a host of one doctor after another. They met her entire team: neurology, trauma, respiratory, etc. Of course, in a situation such as this, they never want to give you much hope. They informed them that it was a severe head injury (the same type you would see as a result of shaken baby syndrome), and that they didn't know if she would make it. However, that if she did live, she would most likely be a vegetable for the rest of her life. So, after getting this update, and knowing just how bad it was, I left for Columbia almost immediately of getting home. I arrived in Columbia at about 9:30 that evening. Upon getting there, they immediately let me in to see her, of course she wasn't aware of anything as she was in a full-blown coma in the ICU. (These pictures were taken on October 8th).



I stayed there the rest of that week and weekend, but then had to return to work. My parents and sister (Carrie) stayed there pretty much the entire time. When I was up, we rented hotel rooms for the extra people. My parents were able to get into the local Ronald McDonald house just down the street, so that saved them some on expenses. I came back every weekend while she was in ICU, and there were many ups & downs during that time. She had a lot of posturing (typical in head injuries). They put a trach in as it would be easier for them to suction therefore drastically reducing the risk of pneumonia. Late one night we got the cardiology team called in because her heart-rate jumped to 210 bpm, and they said they needed to get it down or it could cause her to have a heart attack. They wanted permission to try an IV drug, so we gave consent. They said if it didn't work by morning that they wanted to stop her heart & restart it by shocking it back to a normal rhythm. Luckily, she came out of it with just the medicine, so we didn't have to resort to that.

The coma lasted for 3-1/2 weeks. During that time the team from Rusk Rehabilitation started coming over to the hospital to work with her to try to build up her muscle strength and control. Before she was out of the coma, Rusk's team decided to transfer her to their facility. They were afraid that they were losing too much ground waiting around on the hospital. So, we transferred to Rusk, and they started working with her everyday. Upon entering rehab, she couldn't use the right side of her body very much at all. They had to re-teach her a lot of things: walking, talking, eating, etc. However, about one week before Christmas she had made enough progress that she had finally got to come home. I was traveling back & forth every other weekend until I found out around Thanksgiving that I was pregnant, then the travel became a little too much for me.



She was thrilled to be home. They started her on physical therapy at the Scotland County Hospital three days a week. In January, there was a tutor that came to the house to home-school her, and she was still able to go ahead and graduate with the rest of her class in May 2009.


As of now, a year later, she still attends physical therapy three days a week. She still has difficulty with her right wrist/hand as well as a significant limp when walking on her right leg. Her speech is a little slow and slurred, but if you take the time to listen, you can understand her just fine. She also had trouble with her right eye, but other than being a little sluggish, it has come back almost 100%.



In September she enrolled at North Central (in Trenton) for a couple of their online courses. Her doctor didn't want her on campus, and didn't want her taking more than 6 credit hours. So, she is still at home, and taking college reading & sociology this semester. She's had a long road to recovery, but I couldn't be happier for her. She's worked very hard to get where she is today. She's not 100% yet, she may never be, but considering what the alternative could have been, we're very pleased with her progress!!!