Adrienne is a 7 year-old girl who was riding a horse is a parade on 8/2/97 when her horse began galloping and Adrienne fell off. She sustained a loss of consciousness and combativeness at the scene. She was intubated and flown by Life Flight to Primary Children's Medical Center. A CT scan found a left occipital depressed skull fracture and a right posterior occipital parenchymal and right temporal contusion. She has a left ventricular bleed and a high intercranial pressures.

That was the Doctors report, now for mine. She was riding in the raspberry's day parade in Garden City Utah, and I was a mile ahead of her in a car and I saw the horse come running past and I went after the horse fearing that it might hurt other people. When I returned I found her lying on the street with a lot of paramedics around her. They had all ready called Life Flight ( 45 min. one way) and the ambulance was on the way. We were very blessed being that the paramedics were directing traffic for the parade and were all right there, and because of the rural location they had a lot of equipment in the trunks of their cars.

During this experience my grandpa came dressed as a fireman which is what he was before he died. He told me everything would be all right. Which didn't help until a few days later.

I was able to ride with Adrienne to the hospital and later I found out that they only do that because they believe the patient is going to die.

We were in ICU for 3 weeks and they tried to put her into a coma and she wouldn't go and they tried to paralyze her and she fought that. She is a fighter.

At one point one of the doctors told me that she was going to die it the pressure didn't come down and that if the surgeons put in the lumbar drain that would kill her what a choice. We put the drain in and things turned around.

Next the Doctors told us that she would be at least 3 months it rehab and into walk out. In 3 weeks she was walking and running all on her own. She is a very amazing girl.

We started from scratch and she had to learn it all again eating, swallowing, standing, walking, running, writing.....

I stayed with her as much as I could and when I couldn't I had other family around her the only time she was alone was when the shifts changed in the ICU. We played a lot of music, which I believe really helped her, and there were a lot of people praying for her.

She is now doing really well in school and takes everything as a challenge and she usually wins. She is having seizures and the medication is really helping that. Although we do need to get some more OT to get her back where she was. We also have her seeing a Psychologist to help her with her social and impulsive thinking, and it seems to be helping. She also still enjoys horses and wears a helmet when riding.

I know that we still have a long road and more complication along the way being that the TBI part won't ever go away, but through faith and prayers we can do it.

Keep the faith and the Lord will bless you all.

Email Adrienne's Family