Lisa's Story 

Jean and David say it was like watching their daughter be reborn, more than a month after the accident that almost claimed her life.

Lisa was 13 years old, on her way to their church for play practice, when the car that she, her mom and her brother were riding in went off the road and over a bank.  Trees had impacted both sides of the car, but brother Chad was able to go for help.

“Lisa was unresponsive, and her face was full of blood,” remembers Jean, who has training as a nurse.  “As a nurse, I did the nursing thing and put pressure on her face, but as a parent, I never thought of death.”

Lisa was extricated from the car, and Life Flight® was dispatched to the scene to take her to Geisinger’s Janet Weis Children’s Hospital, where Dave would be waiting.  Despite his training as an emergency medical technician, he says, he wasn’t prepared to see his own daughter in such a state, shortly before she was taken into surgery.

“It was nothing I haven’t seen before as an EMT, but it never came so close to home,” he says.  “I said a prayer and went back to the waiting area.  It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.”

“Lisa suffered many injuries, the most serious of which were the severe head injury and the collapse of her lung,” says Karen Bailey, MD, pediatric surgeon at Janet Weis Children’s Hospital.  “She needed surgery almost immediately because of the bleeding on her brain.”

Part of Lisa’s skull had to be removed to relieve pressure. There was extensive facial surgery to repair nearly all of the bones in her face.  And she couldn’t breathe on her own.

“Her eyes were sutured shut, her ribs and collarbone were broken, and most of her injuries were from the neck up,” Jean adds.

“Jean stayed with her in her hospital room, and I traveled back and forth to be with her,” Dave remembers.  “Without the support of our family and our faith, we wouldn’t have been able to get through it.”

After 12 days, just before Christmas 2005, Lisa overcame one of the major hurdles in front of her: she was taken off the respirator and started breathing on her own. 

With that breath, Lisa began the long process of being “reborn.”  She couldn’t walk or talk yet, she was minimally responsive, and doctors still were unsure of the degree of brain damage she might have.

“She had to relearn everything,” Jean says.  “I watched her as she rolled over for the first time, sat up for the first time, ate for the first time, walked for the first time….”

And when Lisa’s tracheotomy tube finally was removed, she spoke for the first time, calling her dad back home and telling him “I love you.”

“With injuries like this, outcomes can be variable,” Dr. Bailey says.  “But kids are amazingly resilient.  A lot of times, with a lot of care, they will relearn the everyday things that we take for granted.”

Lisa faced a long battle, first at Janet Weis Children’s Hospital then in rehabilitation in Philadelphia, but she finally was able to go home on April 12 – more than four months after the accident.

And one of the first things she did when she returned?

“I opened Christmas presents,” Lisa smiles, noting that she had been hospitalized through the holiday season.

While she still is undergoing physical, speech and occupational therapy, Lisa has made great progress.  She has returned to school full-time and has been on the honor roll since that return.  She even is planning to be a veterinarian when she gets older.

“She’s been such an inspiration, and stayed very positive through the whole thing,” Jean says.  “It’s been a long road, but we’ve learned and grown from it.”