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Student battles back from debilitating crash
San Diego Union Tribune ^ | 1/1/10 | Steve Liewer

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

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.”


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: braininjury; disabled; medicine; moralabsolutes; prolife
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To: BykrBayb

Free Republic is a pro-life, conservative web site. Anyone who comes here pushing the dogma of the death cultists don’t really belong here. There should tread carefully cuz they don’t really belong here if they’re not pro-life. They could be kicked off FR if they get carried away.


81 posted on 01/02/2010 4:21:35 PM PST by floriduh voter (Thanks, Dutch Guy. Apparently, you are U.S. Homeland Security.)
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Comment #82 Removed by Moderator

To: BykrBayb

>>So you agree that in the absence of such a document the presumption should be for life? Make up your mind. Life, or death? Which is it?<<

Neither. That is not the case. Mrs. Schaivo expressed her desires to her husband. He had the legal right and responsibility to carry out her wishes.

Straw man arguments are for the weak of character and mind. But, for the record, when did you stop beating your wife?


83 posted on 01/02/2010 4:23:13 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Communism comes to America: 1/20/2009. Keep your powder dry, folks. Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: floriduh voter

>>Free Republic is a pro-life, conservative web site. <<

I am for personal decisions and against fascism as is FR. Schaivo was a case in support of individual freedom.

People who support the Fascist Nanny State Government should probably be booted.


84 posted on 01/02/2010 4:25:06 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Communism comes to America: 1/20/2009. Keep your powder dry, folks. Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: floriduh voter
"Father Pavone said that no human being should ever be called a vegetable."

Is it permissible to refer to California as the land of fruits and nuts?

85 posted on 01/02/2010 4:25:14 PM PST by verity (Obama Lies)
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To: little jeremiah

>>I’m wondering if you are on some kind of drugs, and/or into S&M. You’re a pretty strange character, and so full of bile that you can’t see yourself as you are. It’s quite sad, actually.<<

No bile, just against busybody fascists. As long as people want to use the government to interfere with individual life choices and brush the laws we agree to abide by aside, they will find me in their path.


86 posted on 01/02/2010 4:26:59 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Communism comes to America: 1/20/2009. Keep your powder dry, folks. Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: verity

I wouldn’t call Ca the land of fruit and nuts. That’s where FR is. lol


87 posted on 01/02/2010 4:27:05 PM PST by floriduh voter (Thanks, Dutch Guy. Apparently, you are U.S. Homeland Security.)
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To: freedumb2003

All of this back and forth stuff only points to one logical conclusion:

Everyone should have a written document stating their last wishes. This crap about who should be in charge of these decisions and when would have been avoided.

You should talk to an attorney before writing one out, or at least do a ton of research on the web because there are specific issues that need to be planned out.

But in the end, your (meaning everyone that reads this, no one in particular) wishes may be different than mine. But if you can point to a document that has been properly drafted, you can cut out the discussion pretty darned quick.

And waiting until the “death bed” is really not the time for the conversation. As my Dad told me, sitting there with a morphine drip—its a lot easier to talk about it, than do it. But it was the right thing for him.

Just my two cents.


88 posted on 01/02/2010 4:27:19 PM PST by Vermont Lt (I have lived here all my life, and now is the first time I am ashamed of my country)
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To: freedumb2003
Remember that when your fascism comes to bite you. If you tell your spouse your final desires, the government, backed by pitchfork-wielding fanatics can do whatever it wants. It can brush aside laws, legal precedents, your desires, anything.

The important thing is that some, somewhere, thinks he/she is Right and Good. The law cannot stand under such an assault.

I hope you remember that when your beloved shadow government orders your death, backed by the gun wielding fanatics who were at Terri's death bed. You may feel safe in the belief that it can't happen to you, but if it could happen to Terri, it could happen to anyone.

89 posted on 01/02/2010 4:31:09 PM PST by BykrBayb (Somewhere, my flower is there. ~ Þ)
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To: floriduh voter
FR is a morally superior island in the middle of an ocean of fruits and nuts. OK? :-)
90 posted on 01/02/2010 4:32:21 PM PST by verity (Obama Lies)
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To: Vermont Lt

>>Everyone should have a written document stating their last wishes. This crap about who should be in charge of these decisions and when would have been avoided.<<

Heck YES! If anything “good” came from the Schaivo case, it was making it clear that everyone should put his/her final desires in writing — it can be done for next to nothing on the Internet.

That is why I and my wife have our final desires on file.

I am not saying it was “good” that Ms. Schaivo passed. The ambiguity she left has created a lot of problems for many.

But we can’t escape the legal issues as well and allowing the Government to interfere in our personal decisions. And the Governments ordering her desires be carried out is the best we could hope for.

But in the final analysis


91 posted on 01/02/2010 4:32:44 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Communism comes to America: 1/20/2009. Keep your powder dry, folks. Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: wagglebee

was she also bulimic?


92 posted on 01/02/2010 4:33:55 PM PST by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . What ever I do is what shall be)
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To: BykrBayb

>>I hope you remember that when your beloved shadow government orders your death, backed by the gun wielding fanatics who were at Terri’s death bed. You may feel safe in the belief that it can’t happen to you, but if it could happen to Terri, it could happen to anyone. <<

Why, it didn’t do so for Schaivo.

You need to read for comprehension. It was HER DESIRE, as passed along by her legal representative, her husband. That is the law. If you want to change it — great.

If you want to BREAK it, then you need to go past me.

I have my final wishes on file. The government will not come to kill me as long as it follows the same law it followed for Schaivo.

It is fascists like YOU who will ask the Government to bypass the law and fulfill your moral wishes. As I said, when those wishes are not the same as yours, YOU and your little fascist friends will be the one responsible for Government-ordered executions.


93 posted on 01/02/2010 4:36:34 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Communism comes to America: 1/20/2009. Keep your powder dry, folks. Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: freedumb2003

So now you’re back to saying that in the absence of a written document, the presumption should be that she told her husband the opposite of what she told everyone else, and she should be killed. You’re saying that the presumption should be in favor of death, not life. But you’re too cowardly to admit that’s what you’re saying. Heck, you’re even too cowardly to stick with the same opinion for two consecutive posts.


94 posted on 01/02/2010 4:36:38 PM PST by BykrBayb (Somewhere, my flower is there. ~ Þ)
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To: BykrBayb

>>So now you’re back to saying that in the absence of a written document, the presumption should be that she told her husband the opposite of what she told everyone else, and she should be killed. You’re saying that the presumption should be in favor of death, not life. But you’re too cowardly to admit that’s what you’re saying. Heck, you’re even too cowardly to stick with the same opinion for two consecutive posts.<<

You need to read for comprehension. I have been 100% consistent. The fact you don’t LIKE the fact I oppose your fascism doesn’t make me inconsistent.

Your pathetic attempts to make strawmen doesn’t really work. I hear the beatings you give your wife are not nearly as bad as they used to be.

The law is clear about who controls the final wishes of someone — the closest relative. In this case, the husband.

You don’t like it, change the law.

In the meantime, take your fascist desires of government domination into personal away.


95 posted on 01/02/2010 4:40:24 PM PST by freedumb2003 (Communism comes to America: 1/20/2009. Keep your powder dry, folks. Sic semper tyrannis)
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To: bert

The medical examiner said Terri didn’t have an eating disorder. Her family, and even her estranged husband agreed with that assessment. But somehow her nonexistent eating disorder is considered justification for starving and dehydrating her to death. Should we kill alleged alcoholics (even those proven innocent) by alcohol poisoning?


96 posted on 01/02/2010 4:43:00 PM PST by BykrBayb (Somewhere, my flower is there. ~ Þ)
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To: BykrBayb; wagglebee; metmom

Check this thread out. “Our Pro-Life Message is Taking Hold”. Gee, doesn’t sound facist to me or hateful or evil... and there are those pesky Ten Commandments too. How does one get around those????

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2419667/posts


97 posted on 01/02/2010 4:44:20 PM PST by floriduh voter (Thanks, Dutch Guy. Apparently, you are U.S. Homeland Security.)
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To: floriduh voter

I will check out the link.


98 posted on 01/02/2010 4:49:28 PM PST by little jeremiah (Asato Ma Sad Gamaya Tamaso Ma Jyotir Gamaya)
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To: freedumb2003

You need to learn the difference between comprehension and agreement. Just because I comprehend that you’re falsely accusing of Terri Schiavo of being complicit in her own murder doesn’t mean I agree with your lies.

Several laws were broken to achieve the murder of Terri Schiavo. You got what you wanted, but somehow it’s still not enough. You can’t get decent people to crave the blood of innocents, and that eats you up.

You’re wrong about fascism being the same thing as morals. There is a difference.


99 posted on 01/02/2010 4:50:09 PM PST by BykrBayb (Somewhere, my flower is there. ~ Þ)
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To: freedumb2003; BykrBayb; floriduh voter; Lesforlife; little jeremiah; metmom; John D
Mrs. Schaivo expressed her desires to her husband. He had the legal right and responsibility to carry out her wishes.

Oh really? Then please explain why he waited until AFTER Terri was awarded money before making these wishes known.

100 posted on 01/02/2010 4:52:46 PM PST by wagglebee ("A political party cannot be all things to all people." -- Ronald Reagan, 3/1/75)
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