Posted on 01/02/2010 1:38:55 PM PST by wagglebee
Jodie Beckner demonstrated a move at Pilates Plus in La Jolla, where she teaches classes. Six years ago, Beckner suffered a permanent traumatic brain injury after a head-on collision on an icy Vermont road. She graduated from SDSU in December and hopes to go to nursing school. Peggie Peattie / Union-Tribune
Mike Beckner was fixing dinner when he got the phone call parents dread — the one from a doctor trying to break awful news gently.
Earlier that day, Nov. 11, 2003, his daughter, Jodie, had driven up a mountain to catch the first day of snowboarding season at a ski resort when her SUV spun out on a patch of ice and hit another vehicle.
“They were starting to tell me there was a car crash,” recalled Mike Beckner, 60, of Encinitas. “I couldn’t process it. I was in shock. I handed the phone to my wife.”
The Beckners reached the bedside of their comatose daughter the next afternoon, the beginning of a six-year rehabilitation struggle. Jodie Beckner was a top-notch college student and competitive gymnast, swimmer and diver at the time of the crash. Afterward, she fought her way back from an almost infantile state to become a woman as smart, funny and capable — though profoundly changed — as the one who drove up the mountain that day.
In December, Beckner, 24, of Ocean Beach earned her bachelor’s degree in public policy from San Diego State University. She hopes to enter an accelerated nursing program next fall and perhaps use her skills in the Peace Corps one day.
“Jodie has been knocked down so many times over the past few years, but she keeps getting back up,” said her mother, Kathy Beckner.
Today, all Jodie knows of the crash is what she has heard from others: Her car slid across the road into oncoming traffic. Her head slammed into an air bag, and the force rattled her brain, impairing her cognitive and emotional states.
She barely stirred for five days in the hospital and didn’t recognize her family for three weeks. She said her last memory from before the accident is of a camping trip she took a week or two earlier.
The first three years of recovery were filled with intensive physical and occupational therapy, including neurological treatments that ultimately helped to restore the damaged circuitry in her brain.
Mike and Kathy Beckner said their daughter was emotionless and isolationist at first. Once she started a task, such as brushing her hair or working on a word puzzle book, she would keep at it continuously unless someone told her to stop.
“She was like a zombie,” Michael Beckner said.
“You would look at her and look right through her, because there didn’t seem to be anything there.”
But Jodie Beckner soon made astonishing progress. Just six months after the crash, she took a job stocking shelves at a store. In summer 2004, she began college-level classes again.
“At the rehab center, they said she was taking quantum leaps,” Kathy Beckner said.
Jodie Beckner doesn’t remember her decision to apply to SDSU in 2004, though she told her mother about wanting to live near her older sister, Mary Beth, in San Diego. She started fall courses on the campus with a vigor that astonished her parents, who moved from New Jersey to Encinitas in 2007 to keep the family close together.
Beckner juggled a full-time job and a full class load, studying extra to make up for shortcomings in her short-term memory. An SDSU program for students with disabilities helped ensure that classrooms accommodated her needs, such as letting her sit near the front so she could hear better. The car crash had damaged her hearing.
“I’m sure I had” doubts, Jodie Beckner said. “But I’ve never said, ‘I can’t do this.’”
She claims no great spiritual rebirth from her close call, but said it has spurred her desire to help disadvantaged patients.
Kathy Beckner sees her daughter’s turnaround as a purposeful blessing.
“I’ve told her, ‘You have a mission on Earth,’ ” Kathy Beckner said.
“It’s a miracle she has come this far.”
It wasn’t directed at you. It was directed at the first name in the *To* field. I just courtesy pinged you to let you know that I was responding to another’s comment to you.
It’s my understanding that generally, the first name is who the comment is directed to, and the other names are courtesy pings wither because they were mentioned by name, or the poster thought the person might have some interest in the comment.
Also, the comment in italics wasn’t yours, so that’s another way of knowing who the comment was addressed to.
My point to the other FReeper was that Terri did not *pass* which usually implies dying of natural causes, not as a result of being starved and dehydrated to death on a judge’s order as desired by the unfaithful spouse.
Post 144 - good find! Husband Michael Schiavo says brain stimulator was a success!!!!
I hope they give him enough time.
We recently had a family friend be in a car accident where she suffered a brain injury. Then her friend crawled out of what was left of the car (which isn’t much, I’ve seen it) she checked our friend’s vitals and she wasn’t breathing. The girl thought she was dead.
She was in a medically induced coma and came out of it on her own, weeks before they expected. There’s not a thing wrong with her but some scars from the surgeries.
The body has an amazing ability to heal, if given the opportunity.
Even Christopher Reeves was making medical history with his recuperation. Because he had the money, he got the finest rehab money could buy and his nerves started healing. Apparently, what he did really shook up what the medical community had believed about rehab for spinal cord injuries.
I have such a problem with the deathbots who are so eager to kill people.
Especially those who call themselves *Christians* and hold to that position. You’d think that someone who claimed the name of Christ would see more value in life than to treat it as disposable.
Jesus Christ specifically addressed this issue and even made a point to speak about the right to food and water:
31 And when the Son of man shall come in his majesty, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit upon the seat of his majesty. 32 And all nations shall be gathered together before him, and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats: 33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on his left. 34 Then shall the king say to them that shall be on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess you the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in:
36 Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me. 37 Then shall the just answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, and fed thee; thirsty, and gave thee drink? 38 And when did we see thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and covered thee? 39 Or when did we see thee sick or in prison, and came to thee? 40 And the king answering, shall say to them: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.
41 Then he shall say to them also that shall be on his left hand: Depart from me, you cursed, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. 42 For I was hungry, and you gave me not to eat: I was thirsty, and you gave me not to drink. 43 I was a stranger, and you took me not in: naked, and you covered me not: sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. 44 Then they also shall answer him, saying: Lord, when did we see thee hungry, or thirsty, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister to thee? 45 Then he shall answer them, saying: Amen I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me.
46 And these shall go into everlasting punishment: but the just, into life everlasting.
-- Matthew 25:31-46
A very old friend was in a car crash years ago and sustained such terrible injuries he was in a coma for weeks - maybe even two or three months, can’t remember. Not a medically induced coma. I told his story on FR some years ago. His wife refused to allow them to pull the plug. She prayed a lot about him and sat by his side for weeks, reading out loud.
He finally came out of the coma and was able to say these words:
“Thank you”.
They said then that he would be a “vegetable”, wouldn’t walk, etc.
He is now talking, walking, doing some work around the house. He is very impaired compared to how he was before (part of his brain was destroyed in the accident) but he has undergone tremendous progress due to his own determination and the love and care of his family.
He also had a lot of character changes that he needed to go through and his troubles and the love of his wife and family have made him a changed man - for the better.
I am so sickened by the attitude that helpless people should be killed - or it’s the “government interfering”. When it is obvious that making the government interfere to be able to kill is the real story.
Ouch.....
It’s especially sad when it’s the husband who wanted to kill her could have her legally murdered after his first failed attempt.
Not only does he get to have her killed, he has no legal repercussions, matter of fact, the same government that should have prosecuted him for a crime is the one he got to do the dirty deed.
And to think that there on trolls on FR who advocate and applaud that very thing.
It seems pretty straight forward, if a person neglects the sick, starves and dehydrates the hungry and thirsty then they WILL go to Hell.
I never thought of those verses in light of caring for the debilitated that way.
That’s a great application of that principle.
Christlike love is about serving others, not serving self.
A few years ago one of the ghouls was going on and on about how it was "playing God" to give a person food and water, it hit me like a ton of bricks that our Lord said the EXACT OPPOSITE.
I believe that this passage indicates that healthcare IS a right; however, the concept of "rights" has been lost due to the left redefining terms. I right is something that the government cannot TAKE AWAY, it DOES NOT mean that the government must provide it. I think a lot of the criticism of the Catholic Church's position on healthcare comes from a misunderstanding of what a right actually is.
It does kind of lay to rest the idea that providing food and water is extraordinary measures.
Simple logic would dictate that “extraordinary measures” would only include those things that a healthy person does not need to live (e.g. a ventilator), because NOBODY can live without food and water they must be considered BASIC NECESSITIES of life.
I thought that was obvious to everyone, but some of our visitors clearly don't get it.
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