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.”
They weren't involved. They were too involved. They weren't involved. And now we're back to them being too involved again. Okay, what was your point again?
It was you all that introduced the husband’s peccadilloes. My point is they are irrelevant, no matter how much you Nanny-Staters want to bring them up.
No, that was you.
You are very slow. I will go slowly. When you marry, you give up almost all legal ties to your previous family. And if an adult leaves his/her home the legal ties to the original family become tenuous. Marriage severs them altogether.
No, Terri retained the legal right to associate with her family, even after she got married. A marriage license is not a bill of sale.
Of coure, you Nanny Staters will say anything an build any straw man to make sure you defend Big Government to support your political agenda.
You seem to have me confused with someone who supports the government's "right" to order the death of innocent citizens against their wishes.
You can’t embezzle what is yours.
Terri's rehab money belonged to Terri. Her estranged husband was awarded separate funds to compensate him for his alleged loss of consortium. Aside from the fact that he obtained the award through what he later acknowledged was fraud, that part of the money was his. The money he embezzled from Terri's rehab fund was hers. If a marriage license really was a bill of sale, you might have a point, but it isn't.
The parents only started “caring” substantially when there was money involved.
Even Terri's estranged husband admitted that's not true.
It's no surprise that fd doesn't get that. He doesn't have the foggiest clue what science is really all about.
How much hate and evil does it take to want an innocent woman starved and dehydrated to death?
Facts are stubborn things.
The culture of death ALWAYS utilizes emotion to carry out their agenda, look at some of Hitler’s speeches sometime.
And if an adult leaves his/her home the legal ties to the original family become tenuous. Marriage severs them altogether.
Which is it? Giving up *almost all* legal ties? Or *severs them completely*?
You're talking out of both sides of your mouth.
Details, details......
>>It’s no surprise that fd doesn’t get that. He doesn’t have the foggiest clue what science is really all about.<<
Says the luddite.
God, you are an evil, hateful and very stupid shrew of a stalker.
I was pinged to this thread because I’m on the Moral Absolutes ping list.
I’m not following you around looking for your posts, hence not stalking you, for all you false assertions.
This is a public forum and since I was pinged to this thread, I’m free to post on it, and I will to defend other helpless people from liberal deathbots.
BTW, you never answered the questions about why he didn’t just divorce Terri and let her family take over her care, or whether you would like to have someone *bless* you in the same way she was *blessed*, since that’s what you consider a starvation and dehydration death.
>>This is a public forum and since I was pinged to this thread, I’m free to post on it, and I will to defend other helpless people from liberal deathbots.<<
The only liberals on this thread are you Big Government Nanny Liberal Statists (shrews).
>>BTW, you never answered the questions about why he didn’t just divorce Terri and let her family take over her care, or whether you would like to have someone *bless* you in the same way she was *blessed*, since that’s what you consider a starvation and dehydration death.<<
He chose not to. Unlike you Nanny-state fascists, who would push your tiny-brained sensibilities on all you survey, I believe that people can decide for themselves.
As far as “starvation and dehydration” — she was unable to eat and drink. This was merely allowing nature to take its course without interruption. Of course, you Holier Than Thou Big Government types think the Holy Government you worship and kneel to should interfere as long as it supports your narrow political agenda.
You fascists are the worst of the lot. You hateful shrew ones even more so.
Leaving your spouse, moving in with another person, getting engaged to them and having children with them constitutes marital abandonment in any state in the nation.
>>The culture of death ALWAYS utilizes emotion to carry out their agenda, look at some of Hitler’s speeches sometime.<<
It doesn’t take long for you fascists to wander into Godwin’s Law.
Godwin's Law is when someone compares another poster to a Nazi, that HAS NOT been done. I simply pointed out how Hitler used emotion to push death.
However, I developed "Wagglebee's Corollary" to "Godwin's Law" and that is that whenever the subject is euthanasia or eugenics, some supporter of those agendas will inevitably state something that perfectly mirrors Nazi propaganda.
You obviously misunderstand what Godwin’s Law is. Comparing forced euthanasia to forced euthanasia doesn’t qualify as Godwin’s Law.
A little piece of advice for you. You might want to familiarize yourself with your host’s views before characterizing them in such a negative light.
>>However, I developed “Wagglebee’s Corollary” to “Godwin’s Law” and that is that whenever the subject is euthanasia or eugenics, some supporter of those agendas will inevitably state something that perfectly mirrors Nazi propaganda.<<
Yes, and having Government control every aspect of a person’s life applies perfectly.
If the government has any duty to perform at all, it is protecting the lives of its citizens.
What you want is a nanny state that obeys your wishes. Apparently you wish that helpless people you want dead should be allowed to be murdered.
And then be able to call people who stand up for the helpless fascists and shrews.
You want to live in a fantasy world where people can be allowed to kill anyone who can’t fight back and defend themselves. You fail to see that you one day would be on the receiving end.
>>You obviously misunderstand what Godwin’s Law is. Comparing forced euthanasia to forced euthanasia doesn’t qualify as Godwin’s Law.<<
This was not forced euthanasia, no matter how you big government fascists want to portray it as such.
TERRI WAS MURDERED (and by a whole bunch of Republicans).
Yes, I understand you prefer murderous anarchy to government, but that IS NOT a principle that the United States of America was founded upon:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men,
>>You want to live in a fantasy world where people can be allowed to kill anyone who can’t fight back and defend themselves. You fail to see that you one day would be on the receiving end.<<
Schaivo told her husband what she wanted. He carried out her desires. The government should never have been involved. It is only you big government Nanny Statists who want to impose your desires over hers.
My final desires are in writing with my lawyer.
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