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.
If there had not been so much family turmoil, this wouldn't have been public. Just like the thousands of times this happens each year.
Au contraire, you made it quite clear that you think it is no detriment to America.
I watched it. What's your point? I said she didn't speak. I said she made noises but they were more moans and groans.
Primal type sounds. That's what she was doing in your video.
Don't bother to put down any more links. I have seen all of them, just like I had seen this one.
My opinion stands. I didn't want the girl to die, but those were not words.
But she did die and that's over.
I still don't care to share my feelings about it.
I most definitely do NOT think this is a detriment to America. This has been going on for at least 30 years now and we are still here.
Because heavy smoking may take 30 years to bring on a fatal case of lung cancer, it is not a detriment to the human body? That makes as much sense as your assertion.
Just what is that "oh so clever" line supposed to mean?
I'm not in denial about anything. You guys who don't understand that this has been going on for a long time without the nation lying in ruins are out of touch with reality.
Praise the Lord!
Kindly note too, that Terri Schiavo is a new nadir in shamelessness for the godless, new age, woo-woo death to the disabled camp. America was at least for those "30 years" not willing for this sort of thing to disgrace their TV screens in real time. America kept it quiet and private. Now, that rubicon is crossed. Increase in shamelessness is never a good sign for a nation.
You have just demonstrated that you know exactly what it means, at least until you plunge yourself back into that Egyptian river.
What is that you think I am in denial about?
Now you resort to creating strawmen.
Nope, that's simply not true. This has been going on for many, many years. It's done at the patient's request most of the time. If not the patient, then the next of kin.
Terri just happened to have a crappy next of kin, but that will not define America for goodness sake.
You people sure are drama queens.
Good lord. Is that the only way you know how to communicate? By these silly games?
I don't want to play with you okay?
That this is a detriment to America, and that this is a significant moment in national consciousness in the operation of this kind of detriment -- very close to a Roe v. Wade type of moment.
If you want to see silly games, all you need to do is read your own postings.
She also had a sociomedical infrastructure around her which was never more friendly to abominations like this, and never more shameless about flaunting itself in the open. People in general, with a few grim exceptions, always had a vague distaste to starving Grandma to death even if they persuaded themselves it was for the best. The newspapers, even the tabloids, never viewed it as a subject worthy of airing widely. That has changed; the public desensitization has now begun. This is not just a case of crappy next of kin; it's a case of crappy society.
No, I am not a drama queen. I am a drama KING and never forget it.
The sociomedical infrastructure has been doing this for years. Just like I told you.
If Terri had a normal loving husband then no one would have known anything about this case, just like the thousands of others yearly.
This is not something that usually gets aired because it is usually respectful and quiet. There is NOT some secret media plot to get us to kill grandma.
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