Posted on 05/11/2005 6:39:07 PM PDT by BykrBayb
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’
Tracy Gaskill shows major signs of recovery after critical accident in 2002
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By FOSS FARRAR, Arkansas City Traveler For nearly three years, Don and Stella Gaskill had hoped their severely injured granddaughter would talk again. Just recently, their prayers were answered.
On Sept. 3, 2002, Tracy Gaskill suffered critical internal and head injuries when her pickup overturned on its top. Doctors told her relatives that night that she probably would die by noon the next day, Don Gaskill said this morning.
“That accident scared us to death,” said Gaskill, who lives in rural Winfield. Tracy Gaskill also is from Winfield.
But through personalized care received at Medicalodge North in Arkansas City and the daily visits and prayers of the Gaskill family — as well as many others in the Cowley County community — Tracy survived and gradually got better, medical personnel say.
Then, about three weeks ago, she spoke for the first time since the accident, Don Gaskill said. About the same time, she began to swallow on her own.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” Dr. David Schmeidler said today. “I have never seen this happen in my career. I’ve read about it happening, the severely brain damaged recovering suddenly, but never seen it until now,” said Schmeidler, the medical director at the Medicalodge. He said he visited Tracy a few weeks ago and she greeted him, “Hi, Dr. Schmeidler.”
“She is actually able to speak and to speak coherently,” he said. “In light of all this stuff on Terri Schiavo — and I believe what was done in that case was wrong — it makes you pause and think. For three years or so, (Tracy) was fed through a tube, then she swallowed a little bit and now she speaks.”
Schiavo was the severely brain damaged woman who died March 31 after spending 15 years connected to a feeding tube. It finally was disconnected, after a bitter right-to-die dispute between her husband and her parents. The case went all the way to the White House and Congress.
But everyone involved in Tracy Gaskill’s care has been pulling for her to get better ever since her accident.
“It’s really quite amazing (that Tracy can speak),” said Lynda Marshall, a registered nurse who works at Medicalodge North. “After they’ve been without speech and the ability to eat that long, it’s very rare they’re able to come back.”
Marshall said Tracy will get speech therapy, continue working on improving cognitive functions and eat on her own.
“We’ve been assisting her with a feeding tube until yesterday,” she said.
Don Gaskill said he feels that without the personalized care his granddaughter has received at Medicalodge, she wouldn’t have made such an amazing recovery.
“In the last year and a half, she’s indicated that she knows us; she has been watching TV and smiling,” he said. “More recently, she started nodding her head when we asked her questions. Then a few months ago, she’d laugh out loud.”
In the last few months, nurses at the Medicalodge worked with her to get her to hum, he added. Finally, she started to speak clearly.
Asked by a reporter today how old she was, Tracy answered, “Twenty-nine. “You’re 30,” Don Gaskill corrected her. “Remember, you had another birthday.”
Tracy Gaskill was injured in 2002 when she lost control of her pickup truck as she was driving south on U.S. 77 just south of Strother Field, near the site of Cowley Cinema 8, according to the Cowley County Sheriff’s Department. The vehicle rolled over.
“We don’t know what caused it,” Don Gaskill said. “We weren’t at home at the time. One of (her) brothers who had heard from the sheriff’s office called us.”
Tracy was taken by ambulance to Strother Field, where a medical evacuation helicopter airlifted her to Wesley Medical Center. Tracy is a sister of Tyler Gaskill, a photographer and office staffer at the Winfield Courier. She has another brother, Shawn, a junior at Winfield High School.
She was in surgical intensive care for about a month at the Wichita hospital, Don Gaskill said, before she was moved into the Medicalodge in Arkansas City.
bttt!
I wonder if "this case" got to have all the up-to-date medical tests that Terri never got.
Thanks for posting this.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow ... Thanks be to God.
"Schiavo was the severely brain damaged woman who died March 31 after spending 15 years connected to a feeding tube. It finally was disconnected, after a bitter right-to-die dispute between her husband and her parents. The case went all the way to the White House and Congress."
Grrr... doncha hate the incessent media misinformation? This was not a 'right-to-die' case, this was a case where her husband and a judge decided to kill her. right-to-kill, euthanasia, or murder, whatever - but not 'right-to-die'. Terri's rights were ignored.
Some people have studied it... Allan Hobson, a Harvard professor for one. I read his book called "The Chemistry of human consciousness" by him, that explained how brain states work. The brain goes from waking to sleeping in very particular ways and depend on critical balances of chemistry to make it work... his studies have explained how manic-depression is an imbalance that creates dream-like hallucinations in people who are awake, and vice versa how drug therapies have worked, and for that matter caffiene, in the brain chemistry balance business.
When you think of it, a coma is not brain damage, but brain *state* damage. What has me convinced that we dont really understand comas well is this nonsense of calling people 'brain dead' when a lot of it has to do with their brain state and *not* their brain capability. It's like a computer that has failed to reboot properly, and then imagining the CPU is missing because it doesnt reboot. Nonsense.
"I wonder if these people have some unique genes that enable some brain regeneration or brain remapping that wouldn't normally occur in someone else."
Both have happened. Whether that is what is happening here.
These miracles are telling us to be humble - we don't know how people are put into these states and we don't know how to get them out of these states.
It may be because of where the damage is and if there can be healing or rerouting around the damage for the signals to be able to connect.
And it is telling us that God decides when we should die and His time is not the same as our time.
The same with the healing He gives.
Bump.
Great news for this wonderful family. (Never forget what they did to Terri Schindler!)
When the soul leaves, it's called "death". The heart beats no more, and that is the evidence. Where there's life, there's the soul. And often the soul can perceive beyond the ability of the senses or body to respond. Even people in comas often can hear, and have said they could hear, once they came out of the coma.
Some people just like death, since it suits their purposes, whatever purposes they have.
The media is so blatant because he public lets them get away with such. The whole notion of a 'right to die,' is a logical absurdity as we are all, in a physical sense, destined to die sooner or later. The 'right to die' is akin to 'the right to obey the law of gravity.' I'm not aware of anyone who has ever been damned to immortality because they were denied the 'right to die' (okay, barring the arguable Biblical interpretation of Genesis regarding Cain). The media uses this wordplay to sugar coat the realities which are the right to life, the right to kill and the right to refuse treatment.
The right to life is a given in our founding document and I would argue that anyone who does not embrace it is un-American. Likewise, society retains the right to deprive life within the constraints of due process and the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. Under no other circumstances may one be deprived of life without violating the Natural Law that must be accepted by any person who accepts the tenets of the Declaration of Independence. The right to refuse medical treatment falls under the pursuit of happiness and as such, is something I firmly believe in, and there are in fact due process considerations to treatment given against one's will, particularly in regards to the involuntary commitment of substance abusers and extreme psychological disorders. In regards to the Schiavo case it is my opinion that Terri's declination of treatment was never adequately established as it would have been given a living will or even corroborating witnesses to her alleged oral statements. It is also my humble opinion that had the case unfolded in 1776, Greer, Felos and M.Schiavo would have been tarred and feathered or worse...
God Bless Tracy!!!
Where did you get that newzjunkie was rejoicing in Terri's death? That isn't what was said.
Are you going to tell me I am rejoicing too, because I am daring to call you on this?
Yes, more than amazing, it is a beautiful story that proves hope is eternal and we should never give up. Just goes to show: The medical profession can never be certain. I will never underestimate the power of God. We have had our own miracle.
At age 15 my son suffered a severe head trauma. He had four subsequent neurosurgeries over the years. The last surgeon reviewed his entire case before operating. After he completed the 10 hour surgery he met me in the recovery room. Standing together beside my son the doctor took my hand in his. He said "Mom, I don't know your religion, I don't know to whom you must pray. But I do know, after reading your son's records, that there is no medical reason he should be alive. There must be a great plan for him." That was over 20 years ago!
Although my son is blind, he holds a Master's Degree and lives independently. I never let go of hope. Hope is given to us to keep and never give away.
IOW, her then husband began a more than a decade campaign to abuse her via forced neglect. The courts in Floriduh ignored all of that abusive behavior and appointed Michael Schiavo to be not only her GA but also the one to determine what 'she would want if receiving food and water in the reduced quality life' he brought her to. But she was not in PVS and she was not brain dead. She was an alive, albeit in severely disabled condition, fellow human being whom the court system executed on the direction of a probate court judge.
If We The People let our outrage abate regarding Terri's inhumane execution, this will become common place execution for the severely handicapped and inconvenient. There is a proud faction at FR delighting in baiting and condecesion regarding the Terri defenders, do you admonish them also? Spread peace and love all you can, flower, but I don't have any intention of allowing my outrage to subside until I'm dead or this nation of MINE corrects that which allowed the heinous outrage to take place. It is in the same category as abortion on demand, and I fight the dehumanization process in every way I can and will so long as I draw breath and have means.
Yes, and they are already dead according to the same people who want to "let them go." I guess Tracy was brought back to life as well. If this doesn't make people stop and think (as well as the fireman from Buffalo's story) about what they are saying when they spout that kind of nonsensical crap, it's because they are incapable of thought. The person (soul, personality, whatever you choose to call it) is still in there regardless of their ability to communicate, and starving them is murder, no matter what silly rationale these people use to justify it. It isn't necessary to believe in God or miracles; all that is needed is the ability to have rational thought.
No need to seal it. If the coroner were not "in the bag," someone else would be performing the autopsy. Cyril Wecht was interviewed on a local radio program about not being allowed to be present when the coroner conducted the autopsy. He said it was the first time anyone had refused him "professional courtesy" to observe. He has quite an ego and was taken aback at the coroner's attitude. Also, no reason was given for the refusal. That ruffled his feathers even more.
Very much agreed. Well said.
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