Posted on 01/02/2010 1:38:55 PM PST by wagglebee
Jodie Beckner demonstrated a move at Pilates Plus in La Jolla, where she teaches classes. Six years ago, Beckner suffered a permanent traumatic brain injury after a head-on collision on an icy Vermont road. She graduated from SDSU in December and hopes to go to nursing school. Peggie Peattie / Union-Tribune
Mike Beckner was fixing dinner when he got the phone call parents dread — the one from a doctor trying to break awful news gently.
Earlier that day, Nov. 11, 2003, his daughter, Jodie, had driven up a mountain to catch the first day of snowboarding season at a ski resort when her SUV spun out on a patch of ice and hit another vehicle.
“They were starting to tell me there was a car crash,” recalled Mike Beckner, 60, of Encinitas. “I couldn’t process it. I was in shock. I handed the phone to my wife.”
The Beckners reached the bedside of their comatose daughter the next afternoon, the beginning of a six-year rehabilitation struggle. Jodie Beckner was a top-notch college student and competitive gymnast, swimmer and diver at the time of the crash. Afterward, she fought her way back from an almost infantile state to become a woman as smart, funny and capable — though profoundly changed — as the one who drove up the mountain that day.
In December, Beckner, 24, of Ocean Beach earned her bachelor’s degree in public policy from San Diego State University. She hopes to enter an accelerated nursing program next fall and perhaps use her skills in the Peace Corps one day.
“Jodie has been knocked down so many times over the past few years, but she keeps getting back up,” said her mother, Kathy Beckner.
Today, all Jodie knows of the crash is what she has heard from others: Her car slid across the road into oncoming traffic. Her head slammed into an air bag, and the force rattled her brain, impairing her cognitive and emotional states.
She barely stirred for five days in the hospital and didn’t recognize her family for three weeks. She said her last memory from before the accident is of a camping trip she took a week or two earlier.
The first three years of recovery were filled with intensive physical and occupational therapy, including neurological treatments that ultimately helped to restore the damaged circuitry in her brain.
Mike and Kathy Beckner said their daughter was emotionless and isolationist at first. Once she started a task, such as brushing her hair or working on a word puzzle book, she would keep at it continuously unless someone told her to stop.
“She was like a zombie,” Michael Beckner said.
“You would look at her and look right through her, because there didn’t seem to be anything there.”
But Jodie Beckner soon made astonishing progress. Just six months after the crash, she took a job stocking shelves at a store. In summer 2004, she began college-level classes again.
“At the rehab center, they said she was taking quantum leaps,” Kathy Beckner said.
Jodie Beckner doesn’t remember her decision to apply to SDSU in 2004, though she told her mother about wanting to live near her older sister, Mary Beth, in San Diego. She started fall courses on the campus with a vigor that astonished her parents, who moved from New Jersey to Encinitas in 2007 to keep the family close together.
Beckner juggled a full-time job and a full class load, studying extra to make up for shortcomings in her short-term memory. An SDSU program for students with disabilities helped ensure that classrooms accommodated her needs, such as letting her sit near the front so she could hear better. The car crash had damaged her hearing.
“I’m sure I had” doubts, Jodie Beckner said. “But I’ve never said, ‘I can’t do this.’”
She claims no great spiritual rebirth from her close call, but said it has spurred her desire to help disadvantaged patients.
Kathy Beckner sees her daughter’s turnaround as a purposeful blessing.
“I’ve told her, ‘You have a mission on Earth,’ ” Kathy Beckner said.
“It’s a miracle she has come this far.”
Huh? Terri was not bulimic.
That’s easy. He couldn’t tell everyone her wish was to die, because he was still busy telling everyone her wish was to live.
There are none so blind as those who do not want to see.
Terri’s husband was a murderous POS. Anyone who can’t see this is supremely dumb and naive. Or is in favor of killing off the innocaent. Terri’s family was constantly begging to just be allowed to take her home where they would take care of her
You are playing a game of pretend with the situation
>>You’re wrong about fascism being the same thing as morals. There is a difference.<<
You need to read for comprehension and stop restating things in false terms.
So have you stopped beating your wife?
>>Oh really? Then please explain why he waited until AFTER Terri was awarded money before making these wishes known. <<
Irrelevant.
>>Terri’s husband was a murderous POS. <<
If you have proof, bring it. If not, you subject FR to libel action.
>>Anyone who can’t see this is supremely dumb and naive. Or is in favor of killing off the innocaent. <<
Or knows more about things like the law than you.
>>Terri’s family was constantly begging to just be allowed to take her home where they would take care of her<<
They had no legal right to do so.
>>You are playing a game of pretend with the situation<<
When it comes to people who wish to enforce their version of morality in the guise of fascism over the law I do not play.
Irrelevant. ~ freedumb2003
He changed his testimony from Terri wanting to live to Terri wanting to die. How is that irrelevant? A marriage license is not a bill of sale.
Still haven’t taken the time to find out what your host has said on the subject?
How so?
You wrote:
He had the legal right and responsibility to carry out her wishes.
Is waiting years to make her wishes known responsible? How can someone who is so irresponsible be a guardian?
Hmmm...according to freedumb, anyone who didn't want to see Terri murdered was "supporting the Fascist Nanny State Government should probably be booted."
I guess the post below falls into that category.
To: RandjukeI said it was wrong to kill her. That is my opinion. Nothing can change it. No list of "facts" will ever change it.And I put "facts" in quotes because most of the so-called "facts" posted here were in fact "opinion." Whether it was a poster's opinion, a reporter's opinion, her husband's opinion, a relative's opinion, a supporter's opinion, a detractor's opinion, a politician's opinion, a lawyer's opinion, a doctor's opinion, the president's opinion, the governor's opinion, or even the judge's opinion - they were and are all opinions.
And none of them are incontrovertible or indisputable fact.
In fact, they continue calling in more doctors and more experts to give their opinion even after it's all said and done. In this battle of press, public, politicians, doctors, lawyers and "experts" the side with the most thumbs down votes won and she was killed. What was it, two out of three or three out of five? How about we go for seven out of twelve? How about one "no" vote out of twelve and you don't execute?
The last I heard, in this country when you are on trial for your life, if there is one doubtful juror, you don't receive a death sentence. The accused receives the benefit of the doubt. Of course, Terri did not even receive the benefit of a trial much less the benefit of the doubt. She was simply snuffed out per a judge's order based on three out of five expert "opinions." It's a shame and a disgrace and a mockery of justice.
We are not slaves to the law. The law is stretched all the time. The “husband” never visited her never cared about her. He murdered her and you buy into his game because you are are weak minded
I am not a slave and don’t think like a slave
>>I am not a slave and don’t think like a slave<<
Merely a fascist.
dumb2003....drop the free from your name. You are a sheeple
>>dumb2003....drop the free from your name. You are a sheeple<<
Drop out altogether. You are a fascist and also unable to even perform the smallest aspect of debate.
So, people who DO NOT think that an innocent person should be murdered are "fascists"? I think you have a good shot at being appointed Zero's "Newspeak Czar".
Appeal to authority.
Why not?
You are getting your butt kicked and I have pointed out all the OTHER logical fallacies you have trotted out to support your desire for Big Government interference when You want it.
You liberals are all the same when the chips are down.
Your concept of "debate" is to proclaim the disabled "brain dead", state that their spouse has the right to kill them and then accuse anyone of disagreeing with you of being a fascist.
>>Your concept of “debate” is to proclaim the disabled “brain dead”, state that their spouse has the right to kill them and then accuse anyone of disagreeing with you of being a fascist.<<
My concept of “debate” is to state facts: Mrs. Schaivo was unable to think, based on all clinical evidence; her husband had the complete right to express her desires and did so; the desire to have government intervene is fascism, pure and simple.
This from the person who has yet to state a single FACT.
I have pointed out all the OTHER logical fallacies
No, you have stated your OPINION.
You liberals are all the same when the chips are down.
As I said, you seem to have newspeak down pat.
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