Posted on 02/16/2005 1:32:50 AM PST by reasonmclucus
Breaking the Silence 20-year wait to hear their daughter speak again is over for parents of near-fatal accident victim By Clara Kilbourn
The call came Feb. 4.
"Are you sitting down? There's someone here who wants to talk to you."
Betsy Scantlin recognized the caller, Jennifer Trammell, director of social services at Golden Plains Health Care Center.
The next voice was different.
"Hi, Mom."
"Sarah, is that you?"
"Yeah."
"Hi, Dad," she said, then, slowly drawing out the words, "Happy Valentine's Day."
For 20 years, Betsy and Jim Scantlin had waited to again hear their daughter's voice.
Jim wanted to rush over immediately to the nursing home. But Betsy advised caution.
"We need to think about it," she said. "It's hard enough to see her, but think about what the reaction will be if it's not what we think."
News of the accident
The news about Sarah's accident came the same way, in a telephone call on Sept. 21, 1984.
The Scantlin family had everything going for it. Jim was doing well financially in a sales position for a mobile home company.
"Life was so much fun," he said.
Sarah, 18, a May graduate of Nickerson High class of 1984, was three weeks into her freshman year at Hutchinson Junior College. She'd been working at Ken's Pizza but had a new job at Wiley's department store. She'd been named to the Hutchinson Junior College drill team. She'd just broken up with a boyfriend her parents didn't totally appreciate. She and some friends "spaghettied" his car.
Sarah went to supper with a couple of friends at Tappers, a hangout for juco students on East 11th.
While walking back to her car, Sarah was hit by a drunk driver. She rolled over the hood and onto the ground. The driver fled.
Betsy Scantlin got a call from one of Sarah's friends just after midnight.
When she arrived at Hutchinson Hospital, there were about 60 kids in the waiting room, waiting to know Sarah's condition, Betsy Scantlin recalled. She heard a carload of Kansas State Industrial employees had happened upon the accident and given Sarah CPR, probably saving her life.
On the morning after she was admitted, Sarah underwent an eight-hour surgery for a critical head injury.
Three or four days after the accident, Betsy Scantlin went to her daughter's bedside to tell her good night. Sarah's neurosurgeon followed her out of the room.
"He sat down and said, 'Let me tell you about Sarah. She's very, very hurt. I took a clot as big as my fist out of her brain and it did a lot of damage ... She's not going to wake up tonight and when she does wake up she'll open her eyes - but she may not recognize you," she recalled the doctor saying.
That's when she began to take life one day at a time.
"I knew from that point on that whatever we got, no matter what, life was good," Scantlin said.
Mother-daughter talk
On Wednesday of last week, Betsy Scantlin, a petite woman with a strong, no nonsense demeanor, was back at her daughter's bedside at Golden Plains Health Care Center.
She strode into the room, flung down the oxygen bottle she depends on because of acute emphysema, lifted herself over the bedrail and climbed into her daughter's bed, snuggling close.
Their faces only inches apart, the two began a mother-daughter talk, ordinary bits and pieces of everyday conversation.
"Who's been to see you?" Betsy wanted to know. "Was it Todd?"
Together they agreed which Todd she meant. With her mother asking the questions, Sarah's responses came slow but sure.
A whole different world
Sarah's dad, Jim, recalls a last-minute dad-and-daughter night out, just days before the accident.
He'd been on the road for several days - maybe a week - with his sales job. When he pulled into the driveway of their home between Nickerson and Hutchinson, near Yaggy Corner, he saw only Sarah's car.
"I told her to put on her glad rags and we'd go out to supper together in the nicest restaurant Hutchinson had to offer," he said.
The next three to four hours are forever "chiseled" in his mind.
Their relationship as a dad and daughter united in a special way that night, he said.
The beautiful thing about Sarah, he said, was her genuineness, her "here I am."
"Days later I woke up in a whole different world," Jim Scantlin said. "Unrelenting grief, self-pity, followed by admonishment and shame."
An empty stare
The stay at Wesley Medical Center lasted seven months. Sarah was in a coma, with her eyes closed, for a month or longer. A ventilator kept her breathing. When her eyes finally opened, there wasn't anything there, just a stare, Betsy Scantlin said, an empty stare.
There was a second surgery.
And then it was January, and Sarah, bedfast and being fed with a tube in her stomach, was moved to rehabilitation.
She was awake and seemed to know what was going on around her.
"Otherwise there was absolutely no communication," Betsy Scantlin said.
That April they moved her to Golden Plains.
What happens, happens
While she was raised in a Christian home, they're not a religious family, Betsy said.
"What happens, happens," she said stoically last week. "Like the man who went over Niagara Falls and came out without a scratch. If it's not your time to go, it's not your time."
They'll just wait and see what happens, she said.
"Right now we're really pleased, more than we'd ever know," she said.
Sarah remains on a stomach tube for feeding. She can't do anything for herself.
"She can't roll over, can't sit up, can't eat," Betsy Scantlin said.
She can kick and does so constantly, her legs thrashing involuntarily.
She watches TV. She's always watched TV. Her caregivers crank her up in bed a little and take her out of bed to put her in a lounge-type chair.
"They've been maintaining her excellently," Betsy Scantlin said. "If it weren't for Golden Plains she would have been dead a long time ago. They've given her excellent care. I can't stress that enough."
Since the speech breakthrough, they haven't talked to a doctor, Betsy Scantlin said. Sarah's original neurosurgeon has died.
"We may have some tests run," she said. But once more, they're just taking it a day at a time.
Crying out
At the beginning, women's clubs, neighbors, family and friends worked at helping to try to stimulate Sarah, said Betty Crofford, who was the Nickerson city librarian at the time.
"They thought if they would read to her it would help," she said.
On her trips to the hospital, Crofford always thought Sarah knew she was in the room.
"But I didn't know for sure if she knew who I was," Crofford said.
Doctors expected Sarah might live only five to 10 years, and because of the extent of her brain damage, they said she'd never walk.
From the blank look in her eyes in the beginning, Sarah progressed to focusing and following someone around the room. Very gradually she began turning her head when someone walked into her room.
Golden Plains Administrator Sharon Kuepker described her previous condition as "semiunresponsive."
"She would follow eye contact, but we couldn't tell how much she could communicate or how much she knew when we communicated with her," Kuepker said.
She began crying out in a loud voice about five years after the accident.
Jennifer Trammell was a nurse aide on the evening shift when Sarah was admitted to Golden Plains in mid-1985. She went on to school to become an LPN and returned to work at Golden Plains.
She remembers the first time she heard the loud outburst and discovered it was Sarah, who had found her voice - but couldn't speak.
"Most everyone who has been here for a long time believes she wanted to communicate," Trammell said.
But they couldn't figure out a pattern to her howls.
Was it a greeting because someone stepped into her room - or because they left? Was she in pain? Did she want something?
"There were other little things," Trammell said. "When they put on her eye makeup, Sarah picked up the cue to close her eyes."
The phone call
Kuepker called Sarah's transformation to speaking a miracle.
When the breakthrough came a month ago, Sarah was in a small group setting arranged by activities director Pat Rincon.
Sarah agreed with what was happening. She uttered an "OK, OK."
For three weeks, Rincon and other staff worked on word formations and talked about Sarah, giving her parents a telephone call so she could wish them a "Happy Valentine's Day."
"We didn't want to give them a false hope," Trammell said.
On Feb. 4, Sarah was ready to make the call.
One of the first things Sarah told her parents was she wanted more makeup.
Baby steps
A next step will be trying to teach Sarah emotions and add them to her speech, Trammell said. She's already given a "ha, ha, ha" in response to the suggestion that her mother is such a funny person, Trammell said.
In all the years Trammell has worked with residents who've suffered head trauma, Sarah is the first to recover speech and the forming of words.
As other residents have watched her progress, they've started helping her, wanting to mother her, Trammell said.
One slice of life at a time Sarah is being informed of her past, Trammell said. She knows she was in an accident and was hit by a car. But she's still in the 1980s.
"So you were a cheerleader," Trammell said someone questioned. "No," she responded, "I'm on the drill team."
They're taking baby steps.
"We don't want to discourage her."
Therapeutic careers
Jim had been a schoolteacher when they married. After the accident he went back to college and earned a master's degree in behavioral disorders, then took a job as a therapist at Charter Hospital.
Betsy worked at Wichita's Ronald McDonald home for 17 years, until last November.
"Being there was therapeutic," she said. "I understood people who were under stress. It's a whole different ball game going into a strange city where you've never been to the hospital and don't know the doctors. I understand all of that."
What's next?
Everything has gone so fast since Sarah regained her speech, Betsy Scantlin said.
"Everybody is in the mode, 'We don't know where we're going to go next,' " she said. "This has happened so fast you do one day at a time. We're not going to make plans. It may not go any further than this."
The muscles in Sarah's hands have curled and tightened into tiny fists. Her feet have rolled and grown inward.
"We want the muscles to say 'yes' but they say 'no, that's not possible.' " Betsy said. "They've withdrawn over the years and we can't undo them. Maybe all we're going to get is speech. But if that's it, we'll take it."
"You never expect to be a parent all your life," Jim Scantlin said.
He's 67, and Betsy's 65.
Welcome back
On Wednesday, a rainbow bouquet of balloons was delivered to Sarah's room with a card attached. It sits on the top of a dresser where she can see it. A card was tucked in where the strings come together.
"It's a brand new day, Sleeping Beauty.
"Welcome back. We miss you.
"All our love, the Nickerson High School Class of 1984."
Open house
On Saturday, Sarah's parents hosted an open house at her nursing home to introduce her to friends, family members and reporters.
Sarah seemed at times overwhelmed by the attention. Dressed in a blue warm-up suit, she spoke little, mostly answering questions in a single word.
Is she happy she can talk? "Yeah," she replied.
What does she tell her parents when they leave? "I love you," she said.
Family members say Sarah's understanding of the outside world comes mostly from news and soap operas that play on the television in her room.
At the open house, her brother asked whether Sarah knew what a CD was. Sarah said she did, and she knew it had music on it.
But when he asked her how old she was, Sarah guessed she was 22. When her brother gently told her she was 38 years old now, she just stared silently back at him.
Her father understands that Sarah probably will never leave the health care center, but he is grateful for her improvement.
"This place is her home . . . They have given me my daughter back," Jim Scantlin said. The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Copyright 2005 The Hutchinson News
Sarah Scantlin who is in worse physical shape than Terri recently talked for the first time since she received a head injury after being hit by a car 20 years ago. Sarah is bedfast --Terri can sit up. Sarah cannot swallow -- Terri was able to do so in the past, but Michael will no longer allow Terri to receive even liquid foods like jello through her mouth and refuses to allow a swallow test recommended by a former court appointed guardian. Sarah previously had only been able to make a loud sound of uncertain meaning -- Terri is able to make a moaning sound. Sarah was allowed to watch tv -- Michael refuses to allow Terri to watch tv.
Sarah said her first word "OK" in a group setting when a staff member was asking another member of the groups to say "OK" -- Michael keeps Terri isolated.
Perhaps God is using Sarah as a witness against Schiavo and his flock of vultures.
That was my very thought when I first heard about Sarah...
The Judges in Florida would have murdered Sarah long ago by starvation. Florida has an evil court system.
Florida is run by 'socialist liberals', you cannot expect them to have compassion for human suffering.
Schiavo's worst nightmare would be for Terri to regain her speech. She might reveal a few things he'd rather have kept quiet - like the cause of her "accident."
bump
I'm hoping those people have the eyes to see it.
I had the same exact thought. The timing is uncanny. God surely has touched Sarah for all the world to see.
Michael Schiavo has a problem, or maybe a multitude of them.
Some number of years ago, he won a huge settlement for the care and therapy of Terri. But the funds were soon gone, with no known record of any particular amount being spent on anything but domiciliary care, very little if any for therapy. Now, with all the money gone, Terri has become "inconvenient". One complicating factor is that Michael has had a long-term "live-in", and apparently a couple of children have been born of this liaison. Not normally a problem, but Michael fancies himself to be a Catholic, and he does not believe divorce, especially under these circumstances, to be a viable option. A divorce, of course, would leave him branded a sinner, in which the children, so long as Terri lives, are illegitimate in the eyes of the Church, a moral dilemma that Michael is apparently struggling with.
Quick solution to this dilemma, is that if Terri dies, by whatever means, Michael is then free to make his paramour an honest woman, and the children may be accepted as his legitimate heirs by the Catholic Church. Who does Michael think he is, Henry VIII?
.....not a justifiable generalization.
Specifically, it has been husband, Michael Shiavo, his attorney, euthanasia advocate George Felos of Dunedin, Fl, and Judge Greer who have done this. Also complicit are an uninformed press, and the ultra liberal, dumbed down, State Supreme Court who obviously care more about which branch of government does what, than they do about this woman's life.
The aforementioned entities most certainly are not driven by compassion, but have seperate agendas which are being played out at Terry's expense.
Perfect sense, actually.
This is the second thread on this subject for me tonight.
The other degenerated into a flame war with myself being pronounced a "sicko" for wanting her to live.
If that's not bass-ackwards, I don't know what is....:-\
Please be sure and read alloysteel's post.
It is the most convoluted [and frightening] logic I've ever heard.
If Michael actually thinks like that, he is deranged as well evil.
Kudos to alloysteel for putting it in a *very* interesting, new and nauseating light.
[like God is gonna let Michael slide because of some weird "technicality" wherein murdering your spouse is preferable to marrying while she's alive...sheesh]
Thanks for the ping!
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