"FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE" by Gina Reid

When tragedy struck our family in May of 1996, I immediately decided that I would not ask "Why did this happen?", and chose instead "How can I learn from this, so that someday I can help someone else."

If you are now, or have ever, sat beside the bed of your child who is in a coma, I believe you are feeling the biggest heartache imaginable, the greatest fear conceivable, and the greatest uncertainty known to any parent in this life. I don't know, nor could I ever know, exactly how you feel or what you are going through. But I do know, that for me, when I watched my little 6-yr-old daughter run into the path of a small truck, traveling about 50 mph, before I could stop her and be hit and thrown 40 feet to the other side of the road, that the next 2 weeks (at the least) were the most heartbreaking, fearful days of my life. And as the little girl who, just minutes before was playing and being a normal girl, now lay still and silent in a hospital bed with what seemed like hundreds of tubes and machines hooked to her, I felt so helpless in not being able to do anything, and so frustrated with the NOT KNOWING!

My biggest fear, of course, was that she would die; but as I reflect back now I see that it was a death, kind of a "living death." I wonder now how in the world I ever made it through such a time and I know that it was because I had three things: FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE! Wherever you personally can find any of these three will be a great help right now. For me they came from God, my family, and words of hope from others who had been there. So I pray that I can give a few words of "hope" to you.

My daughter sustained a severe head injury, she was placed in an induced coma, she had intracranial pressures in the 35 range on occasion, and damage to the temporal lobe of her brain visible on CAT scanning. She, however, had no broken bones or internal injuries (I know, hard to believe, but I swear on the Bible that it is true) and she is by nature a "fighter." She even broke out with the chicken pox while in a coma---probably the only time this has ever happened---I don't know. The good thing, though, was that she surely couldn't itch! (((Smile)))

We and many others continued to pray and trust God to work his healing and bring her back to us.>(FAITH) We were told of other children put into comas much like our daughter who were now back in school and doing fine.>(HOPE) And I found much support in my husband and family and friends who did so very much to help us out.> (LOVE)

Our daughter while at the REHAB hospital went from being totally dependent; eating through a G-tube and not communicating, to running and playing, eating, talking, and knowing all the people she knew before in just 4 WEEKS!

Kreshel Reid, Age 6 (5 months post TBI)

It is now, as I write this, 8 months post-injury and our daughter's ONLY problem right now is a little impulsiveness, trouble with her focus of attention when there are distracters, and just her emotional state of trying to deal with her own feelings of such an injury while being only 6 yrs. old. We still have many months left of the best recovery time (1-3 years I've heard) for these things to work out and heal, and we still believe they will!

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