A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury

By Dawn Corbelli

It was a nice afternoon, sunny, and we were on our way to the store to buy my husband a Valentine's Day card. The next thing I knew is I was being told we were in the emergency room. Veronica in a coma and on life support, me confused and unable to make sense of what was going on. Both of us suffered traumatic brain injuries on February 13, 2008. The worst thing was my husband realizing he might lose us both that day. The first day after spending three weeks in the hospital, I received a phone call from Veronica's doctor saying, "She may never become self-sufficient." That moment I yelled, "You're not God!" And from then on, our family was in a fight to help Veronica heal and overcome. The book is about our family's journey, recovery, brain injury education, and our constant faith in the Lord. We never gave up hope, not once.

A Miracle a Day, One Day at a Time: Hope After Traumatic Brain Injury is a gripping memoir about a family's recovery after a near fatal car accident that left Dawn Corbelli with a moderate traumatic brain injury and her 15-year-old daughter, Veronica, with a severe traumatic brain injury. The physical and mental pain resulting from these injuries will last a lifetime. This book contains an emotional reminiscence of the past 12 years as they tried to put their lives back together. It gives a detailed account of their trials and triumphs and how traumatic brain injuries can change one's personality and those who care about them.

Dawn Corbelli is an advocate dedicated to helping others realize what life with a brain injury entails and to help brain injury survivors, caregivers, their families, and friends, feel validated and understood. You are not alone on this difficult journey.

This memoir contains adult content that is inappropriate for children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098386405

Book preview

Our Future Starts Today

February 13, 2008

The day my 15-year-old daughter Veronica and I almost died—February 13, 2008—was a perfect Colorado mid-winter day, sunny and bright. From the passenger seat of our Honda Civic, I squinted against the glare from the sun setting behind the mountains to the west. As she drove away from the house, Veronica flashed the ASL I love you sign through the window, and my husband Greg signed it back to her as he drove past us going home. We were on our way to Walmart to get a Valentine’s Day card for him.

Barely a month earlier, on January 11, Greg, our 17-year-old daughter Kylie, and I took a flight out of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Greg and I were taking Kylie to Cayde Canyon Achievement Center, a boarding school that helps children ages 5 to 18 who suffer from numerous difficulties, including neurological disorders, trauma, abnormal psychopathology, and substance abuse, that affect how they behave.

Kylie is our child. But Kylie had physical illnesses that were not properly diagnosed. Within standard 15-minute appointments, doctors did not have time to adequately assess her condition, and these affected her daily behavior. We did not understand what she was feeling or going through. She could not control behaviors that provoked us, set us against each other, and created stress in our family. Medication had helped, but she needed help in other ways that we could not provide. At first, Kylie thought we were sending her away because she was a horrible person. We were not sending her to Cayde Canyon so someone else would deal with her. Rather, out of love, we were taking her to a place that could help all of us, as a way to bring our family back together as a unit.

Cayde Canyon was our last chance to help Kylie before we put her out into the world as an adult. We did not know how long Kylie would be there before the therapists decided she was ready to come home. No affection or physical touch was allowed between anyone at any time while she was there. Kylie was permitted three 20-minute phone calls per week and visits on weekends. We are a deeply affectionate family, and the thought that no one could hug Kylie during difficult times made us terribly sad. Leaving Kylie was the absolute worst thing our family had ever experienced in our 20 years together. Naïvely, we never thought we would have to live through anything more traumatic than that moment.

The Accident

Because we lived so far away, Greg and I decided to fly to visit Kylie one weekend each month of her stay at Cayde Canyon. After one month, we made our first visit to see Kylie, returning on Sunday evening. That Wednesday was the day before Valentine’s Day. As Veronica and I headed for the door, she asked if she could drive to get the driving time for her permit. I tossed her the keys, and we were on our way.

Veronica stopped at the intersection of Bradley Road and Powers Boulevard, a cross-street stop sign. I looked left, but all I saw was the back of Veronica’s head. Next, I glanced right as I cleaned my glasses. Nothing.

The next thing I knew, instead of heading south on Powers, somehow our car was in the right-turn merge lane on Bradley, still facing west. I was confused and dazed, unable to grasp what had happened. Until I read the accident report, 12 years later, I never really understood the circumstances of the crash. The vehicle that hit us was a 4x4 truck going 60 mph, and the force of the impact catapulted our car clear over the median island on Bradley.

Accident Report

Strangely, in the immediate aftermath I was calm and serene. I knew if I had died, it would have been peaceful. I could feel a protective presence, a bubble in the car, like hands that held both Veronica and me in a warm embrace.

Once I looked at the windshield, though, I recognized that something was terribly wrong. Veronica was squeezed up behind the steering wheel, her seat crammed over to where the center console used to be. Her head drooped unnaturally. Although my seatbelt was still buckled, my seat was shoved several inches out of the right side of the car.

My eyes blinked slowly. I realized I was screaming—a combination of fear, confusion, and pain in my back and left leg. Even before the emergency vehicle arrived, someone, somehow, found my purse and pulled out my cell phone. I have no idea how they knew which number was my husband’s, because it was only labeled with his name. I believe that caller was an angel; Greg arrived at the scene of the accident only moments later.

Our neighbor Forrest was driving home from work and showed up just as the emergency vehicles arrived. He held my hand and told me, It’s OK, sweetie, you’re going to be all right, over and over. I remember how comforting his familiar voice was through the chaos and terror.

When the Jaws of Life finished cutting off the roof of the car, the doors fell off. Many times over, we heard what a miracle it was that anyone could be pulled out of such wreckage alive.

I recall being lifted out of the car and set on a gurney. One of the EMTs cut my clothes off and immediately covered me with a sheet, but I remember being embarrassed that someone might have seen me naked.

Flight for Life was called for Veronica, but the wind was too strong that day, so Veronica and I were sent off in separate ambulances. Forrest told Greg, Go! Be with Veronica! By then, her blood pressure was 52/0. Her occasional but barely audible moans were the only thing that told him she was still alive. Through a throat tight with tears, Greg just kept choking out the words, Hold on, baby. We’re almost there. Once at the hospital, Veronica was rushed into surgery. The most immediate concern was her severely swollen stomach, which the doctor cut—belly button to sternum—to check for internal bleeding. Fortunately, the swelling was due to a gas bubble. Our guess is that either she saw the truck coming and took a deep breath, swallowing air on impact, or the crash itself forced the air into her stomach. Unbelievably, neither of us had any significant cuts. Yet later, in the back seat of our car, Greg found my coat, its folds filled with broken glass.

Many of our friends lined the hallways of the emergency room. As Greg came in my room to check on me, he was surprised to see our friend Rick and asked what he was doing there. Rick said, I’m checking on our girls. Even 12 years later, Rick’s support through our trauma makes Greg extremely emotional.

As I lay in my room in the ER after an array of X-rays, a CAT scan, and plenty of pain medicine, two thoughts stuck in my mind: I had not made it to Walmart to buy Greg a Valentine’s Day card, and the EMTs cut off my new Victoria’s Secret bra, my new jeans, and my favorite corduroy jacket. I was obsessed with those thoughts, telling everyone I saw, men and women alike. I also fretted that all our friends crowding the hospital hall would see that I was naked underneath the sheet. I don’t even remember being changed into a hospital gown.

A coworker of Greg’s, a man I hardly knew, came in my room, and I told him, crying, about the Valentine’s Day card. This kind man went right out somewhere and got a card for me to sign—even though my signature was an unrecognizable morphine-distorted scrawl. And within a few days, one of our friends went to Victoria’s Secret and bought me a new bra—hot pink with a silver sequined star above one breast. I liked it so much that Greg gave our friend some money and asked her to go back and buy two more in different colors.

Looking back now, these small acts of kindness seem so trivial, but together, they were abundant, and to me, they were blessings—tangible manifestations of God working in our lives.

Aftermath

Greg wanted to be with both Veronica and me, but since that was impossible, some friends stayed with me while he was with Veronica. Many friends came to the hospital to support us, simply by their presence. The care of our friends throughout this nightmare was an enormous blessing we are endlessly grateful for.

The hospital assessment determined that I had five breaks in my pelvis, one in my sacrum, and a moderate concussion resulting in almost complete short-term memory loss, which lasted approximately seven weeks. I needed nine staples in my head. I was in the hospital for a total of three weeks. The first week I was on the fifth floor, in a private room with one nurse for every two rooms, then I was moved to the sixth floor, where I shared a room, and the hospital staffed one nurse per hall. My last two weeks were spent in the rehabilitation unit on the seventh floor.

That first night, I was delirious from pain. No amount of medication could take the pain completely away for any length of time. I was given a morphine drip, with a button to push to release the drug into my vein when I needed it, but the drip only released every 15 minutes. I felt like I needed pain meds much more often than that, so I just kept pressing the button, to no avail.

I was extremely thirsty but was not allowed to drink anything. The doctors told my friends to try and distract me by keeping my attention on other things. One of them told me to sing a song. The only song I could think of was My Girl. My friend stayed close and sang with me and brought me popsicles, which I was allowed. She also wiped my mascara-streaked face with a warm, wet cloth, gently caring for me when I couldn’t take care of myself. She made me feel better, for a few minutes at least.

I had thought I was looking to the right when the truck hit our car, but I must have been looking to the left because the cut was on the right side of my scalp. When someone asked where I hit my head, I remembered that the doctors had cut my hair to the scalp where they needed to staple the cut together. I didn’t care about my hair; I was just glad to be alive. Amazingly, though out of my mind on medication, through everything going on around me, I was able to hold onto that one clear thought—that God had kept me alive.

Veronica was not so fortunate. That first night, though with barely a scratch on her face or body, looking as beautiful as ever even after the crushing accident, she lay in the ICU in a coma and on life support. The doctors told Greg her prognosis was not good, preparing him for the worst. Her brainstem was sheared, and she had a severe frontal-lobe brain injury, two broken hips, and eight pelvic fractures. Her left ankle was also broken—left untreated for weeks and only finally discovered during one of her physical therapy sessions in the ICU—and we later found out that her left side was paralyzed. Blood clots could easily form due to her lack of movement, so a filter was placed behind her belly button to keep clots from getting to her lungs, heart, or brain.

To everyone’s amazement, Veronica made it through that first night, then the next few days. We still had no idea what the future would hold.

Chapter 2

In the Beginning

First Two Weeks in the Hospital

It is said that when women live together, their menstrual cycles often synchronize. The day after we were admitted to the hospital, Veronica got her period. The next day, I got mine. The following day, Kylie got hers, even though she was away at boarding school. For the rest of the time Veronica was in the hospital, more than three months, not one of us got our period again. Stress can have some strange effects on the body.

I took a picture of Veronica while she was in the intensive care unit, although Greg didn’t want me to. I thought it was the last time we would see Veronica alive. She remained in a coma, on life support for the next two weeks. Her condition was further complicated when she developed a severe case of pneumonia. Later, a tracheotomy and feeding tube also became necessary.

Veronica in the ICU

In addition to the pain medications, I was being treated for my bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression. At one point, I developed a fever. After the test for a urinary tract infection came back negative, we learned the fever was caused by a pain medicine that was contraindicated with one of my mood meds.

After only one night in the hospital, the nurses removed my catheter and encouraged me to stand up and use a walker to go to the bathroom. With a broken pelvis, I was in excruciating pain. At one point, I looked up and saw Casey, Veronica’s boyfriend. He had been coming to see me, but instead, he simply walked past my door. All I could think was that I scared him away with my sobbing, and the thought made me feel terrible.

On my third day in the hospital, my hair was finally washed. Nurses held a small air-filled blow-up tub under my head, and as they washed, long bunches of hair and glass came off my bloody scalp.

Doing His Best

The morning after the accident, Greg called Cayde Canyon to tell Kylie about our car accident. Because he was only allowed to talk to Kylie on specified days, he first needed to talk to her counselor, who wasn’t immediately available. He had to leave a message for the counselor to call him back as soon as possible. After explaining about the accident, he told her he wanted Kylie to come home. The counselor responded that there was nothing Kylie could do at home to help us. Kylie was making good progress, and because she would be 18 in a few months, she wouldn’t be able to make up any help missed at this stage. If things got worse, the counselor said, they would certainly put Kylie on a plane home as quickly as possible.

It still shocks me that the counselor would try to influence Greg in this way. I find it hard to believe not letting Kylie be with her family at this heart-wrenching time was a reasonable option. But Greg decided the best thing for each of us was for Kylie to stay where she was. He knew she was in a safe place and was getting care he was unable to provide at that time. Right or wrong is personal, and for him, keeping Kylie at Cayde Canyon was the best choice. He was already stretched thin trying to care for both Veronica and me, doing the best he could and didn’t feel he could give Kylie the attention she would need to deal with the stress of our situation. Veronica was on life support. If she showed no improvement and the determination was that she would not get better and would be taken off life support, Kylie would have enough time to be with us to say our goodbyes.

If it had been up to me, I would have brought Kylie home so I could lean on her, but truthfully, Greg did the best thing for Kylie in the long run. The help Kylie was getting at Cayde Canyon will last the rest of her life. I don’t believe I would have been able to make the difficult choices Greg was forced into at that time. God knew what He was doing when He chose me to be in the car with Veronica.

Kylie has never quite forgiven us for not calling her until the following morning. At the time, she was not specifically told I had a brain injury, so she struggled to understand why I sounded so different and why I frequently fell asleep while we talked on the phone. When she talked with me, I would tell her Veronica was in a coma. When she spoke to Greg, he said Veronica was in a medically induced coma. At different times, Veronica was in both conditions. Between the two of us, Kylie got confusing and, sometimes even, conflicting information. But since Kylie wasn’t with us, she couldn’t determine which was correct. She often felt as though she couldn’t get straight answers, which frustrated and angered her. It has been difficult for Kylie to accept and deal with these issues.

I Remember...

Because of my brain injury, I only sporadically remember visiting Veronica in the ICU. Once, as I sat in the ICU hall outside Veronica’s room in my wheelchair, some friends came to visit her. Crying hysterically, I told them all I could remember of the horrific car accident and how I wasn’t sure whether Veronica would survive. It felt to me like the first time I had heard the story and was telling someone else about it for the first time. Our friends hugged me and told me they already knew about it.

I remember sitting next to Veronica’s bed in the ICU when the nurses came in to suction mucus out of Veronica’s lungs to help her breathe more easily. They put a tube deep down her throat into her lungs and forcefully pushed and pulled the tube up and down several times. The more times this procedure is done, the greater the possibility that bacteria can get into the lungs and cause pneumonia. As they did this, Veronica’s still body jolted forward and back, looking to me as