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Local teen awake after brain trauma
Published April 3, 2009
Ann Marie Campestre’s worst nightmare came true when she got a call her daughter was severely injured in a skiing accident on spring break.
The Lake Jackson resident’s prayers were answered this week when she saw her daughter’s eyes open again.
Abby Campestre, 15, was with friends in Breckenridge, Colo., on March 20, the day before she was to come home, and suffered massive head trauma when she hit a tree. Since that day, her mother has been by her side in intensive care at Swedish Medical Center in Denver.
After being taken off sedation this week, Abby began moving slightly on her own Wednesday. By Thursday morning, Campestre was elated.
“I usually get up two or three times a night to check on her, and this morning, she asked, ‘What happened?’ Why am I here?’” Campestre said. “Then she asked, ‘Where’s my cell phone?’”
Abby’s mom explained what happened as the girl tried to speak in a weak voice. But it wasn’t the sound Campestre was excited to hear. It was the response in her daughter’s eyes.
It was a reaction that, two weeks before, she wasn’t sure she’d ever see again.
“I’m in the same room with her with now, and I’m jumping for joy,” Campestre said from the Colorado hospital Thursday afternoon. “I’m looking at her blue eyes. Blue as the sky. I’ve never seen a blue that pretty before. They’re the prettiest blue eyes. ...”
HEARTBREAKING CALL
An advanced-placement sophomore at Brazoswood High School, Abby sent her mom a text message March 20, saying she was going to try an advanced ski slope. Campestre protested, then told the girl to wear a helmet. But Abby said she was ready.
The next communication Campestre received from the mountains was heartbreaking.
“It was a woman named Lisa who said, ‘I found your daughter on the ski slope,’” Campestre said. “She hit a tree. It was absolutely horrible.”
Abby was being taken by medical helicopter to a trauma center, and Campestre flew to Colorado.
Abby had hit her head on the tree, causing multiple fractures to the back of her skull. The collision also fractured her sinus cavities, and when Campestre arrived at the hospital that Friday evening, the prognosis wasn’t good.
“When the doctors were looking at the X-ray they said it was a miracle she didn’t die,” Campestre said. “There were bone fragments close to the brain in the back of her head. They were not telling me she was going to make it at that point. They said they wouldn’t say that at all. There were too many variables.”
There were cuts on both sides of Abby’s brain, Swedish Medical Center trauma surgeon Dr. Sue Slone said.
“She had a very severe brain injury and a pretty bad skull fracture,” Slone said. “Hers was complicated in that it was broken in many places. She was injured badly.”
BY HER SIDE
Abby was heavily sedated and had as many as 12 IVs of medicine keeping her alive, and still. Aside from the few hours she was able to sleep, Campestre was by her daughter’s side day and night.
“They had her on paralytics so she couldn’t move,” said Campestre, an employee of Angleton ISD. “She was hooked up to so many machines. She had two trees with 12 boxes and regulators. She had four monitors, a ventilator and so many tubes ... you wouldn’t believe it.”
To prevent any further brain damage, and to circumvent brain surgery, a tap was put in to help relieve the pressure in Abby’s brain, Slone said.
Campestre was allowed to stay in a family room near intensive care and remained at the hospital. In the two weeks since the accident, she’s read to Abby, talked to her, held her hand and prayed.
“When the doctors would lift up her eyelids, her eyes were just like pinpoints,” Campestre said. “She looked dead. But you know what? Her heart was beating and things were happening. I was happy with that. She’s a hard-worker and I’m very proud of her. There’s been a ton of prayer, positive energy ... everything.”
Back home, friends and others began a prayer vigil for Abby and her family. Abby served on the Lake Jackson Youth Advisory Commission and that program’s director, Terri Cardwell, heard of the accident the next day.
“I was devastated,” Cardwell said. “When I heard she was on life support and they didn’t know if she was going to make it, I was heartbroken for she and her family.”
That family includes two older sisters, Allison and Ariel, and an older brother, Alexis.
POSITIVE PROGNOSIS
Abby’s prognosis is good but her journey isn’t over yet, Slone said. Doctors will take a closer look at the damage with a magnetic resonance image before recommending a course of therapy, she said.
“Brain injuries don’t just clear up, and she’s going to have to do some work to regain memory and typical interactive things she’s used to doing,” Slone said. “It will be a long recovery, but I think she’s going to do very well.”
Much of the recovery can be done at home, and in Houston, but Slone did not have a date for Abby’s return. Abby is still dealing with pneumonia, a bladder infection and fever, but Campestre is prepared to do whatever it takes to have her daughter back home.
“We know it’s a very slow process, but now she’s responding,” Campestre said as she walked out of Abby’s hospital room for a few minutes Thursday. “I’m so elated.”
As Campestre walked back to Abby’s bedside, she paused with the sound of activity faint in the background.
She picked up Abby’s cell phone and saw a message more telling than words on a screen — an activity showing motor skills, thought process and path of reasoning.
“She text-messaged her sister,” Campestre said of her older daughter, Allison, a student at the University of Texas in Austin. “She’s been text-messaging people.
“I’m going to get my baby back at 100 percent.”
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