my story is too long to retype, so I just copied it from an article that was found in our newspaper by Rebecca Hood-Adams. Anyone wanting to email me, please put "TBI" on the subject line. Thanks! Frances-West Cook

there are just a few minor mistakes in here...1) bolt drilled into my skull had only a small amount of hair shaved off..(thanks to my mama not letting the dr's shave my hair off)2) that's mama in the picture holding the jacket3)And my esophagus wasn't ALL of my colon, but part of it.4) When it says liters, it's supposed to say gallons! :-)Promises Kept

By: Rebecca Hood-Adams, Lifestyle Editor February 17, 2001

Flo Larson Redmond with her 'message from God' jacket.
Darkness came aflood across the flatlands.So much rain, such blanketing fog, even Deltans well-accustomed to the wet remember that night.Nov. 19, 1998.

The evening Friars Point's Frances West Redmond was presumed dead - and a miracle was born.Living in Lyon at the time, Frances West was working for Oxford's Cellular One as an outside sales representative. She'd just been named Mississippi's leading salesperson for October and was slated to receive the honor the next day."I was so excited about winning," says Frances West, 25. That victory would be the last moment she'd remember for more than a year.With mother, Flo Larson Redmond, in tow, Frances West headed to Helena, Ark., to look for a special dress for the award presentation. Mother and daughter were exceptionally close: Frances West was an only child who, after her parents divorced when she was 9 years old, matured into her mother's best friend. The pair laughed and teased as they shopped. Frances West found a wonderful red dress, the perfect color to complement her honeyed skin tones and golden hair. As the clock ticked toward closing time, Flo spied "this great looking tapestry jacket with some kind of animal print." On impulse, she bought the coat that would become her sheltering trademark for the rest of her life.Later that evening, Frances West met with friends, remembering their days at Lee Academy and the University of Mississippi. She was "so glad to be home, had such fun seeing all her friends again," she told her mother during one of several phone calls that evening. Still moving into her Lyon home, Frances West was hauling boxes back and forth from family storage. About midnight, missing her pet, she called to say she was coming to get the dog."I didn't want her to do it," recalls Flo. "But you know young people." Watching television, Flo settled in to wait for Frances West."About 30 minutes later, my entire body started aching," says Flo. "It was so sudden, so bad, I got into a hot shower thinking it would help my old bones."She'd just stepped out when the telephone rang. "It was the call that only happens in the movies," she says. "I never imagined it happening to real people, didn't believe it could ever be me."The Coahoma County Sheriff's Department wanted to know what kind of car her daughter drove."A white Avalon."Car tag?"That was the moment I realized the car was obviously so totalled, it was unrecognizable," says Flo.Frances West loved to hunt, had purchased a special Ducks Unlimited license tag. Simultaneously, Flo and the sheriff's deputy, whose voice she could hear in the background, said "wildlife....""Is she dead?"The dispatcher had barely gotten "no, but..." out of his mouth before Flo was out the door, headed for the emergency room of Clarksdale's Northwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center, nearly 15 miles distant. Grabbing the newly bought jacket, price tag dangling, she fought the rain, taking a short-cut through Lyon's backroads."About midway I saw the wrecker," Flo remembers, "the twisted metal object that was a car at one time, and all the lights from rescue vehicles." Stopping, she was told by Deputy Tracy Vance that her daughter was so badly injured, there was no doubt she'd be immediately airlifted to Memphis. "But Tracy, I'll miss her!" Tears and rain blurred her vision."No you won't." Vance put Flo in his patrol car, lit the blue light and floored it for the hospital. Holding her hand every mile, he prayed aloud with the frantic mother.ER attending physician Rodney Baine pulled no punches: Frances West had been admitted "presumed dead." Her external injuries were sufficiently life-threatening. Who knew what the CAT scan would reveal?Looking down, Flo's eyes fixed on the tapestry jacket clutched over her left arm. Those weren't just any animals; they were marching two-by-two into an ark. Embroidered above, the phrase "PROMISES KEPT.""I knew that was God's message to me," Flo says. "I had no idea that was on the jacket when I'd bought it. But those two words immediately reminded me of all the days during childhood, the nights she was away at college, that I'd prayed for her safety. Frances West was under God's protection. I knew that she was going to be all right."By morning's light, Frances West - left arm crushed, right femur broken, lungs collapsed, liver lacerated, chin sliced - was helicoptered to the Elvis Presley Trauma Unit.She was in a coma from which she wouldn't awake until the next year.

As Flo stepped into the trauma unit, she heard a young girl say, "If there is any help for her at all, it is here. If they can't help her here, they can't help her anywhere.""Believe or not," recalls Flo, "that was a consolation to me: knowing we were at the best place possible."Dr. Charles Moomey headed what would become a lengthy list of lifesavers. At Elvis Presley, a trauma unit supported by fans, a doctor is present at the patient's bedside 24-hours-a-day. A specially trained nurse is not only assigned to every patient, she focuses her eyes on that individual around the clock."They're 'called' into that kind of work," says Flo. "Twelve-hour shifts, working holidays, a job that pays less than other kinds of nursing. I lived in that unit night and day. I learned that those people truly care. And that makes all the difference."Neurosurgeon Charles Kanos discovered that Frances West's coma was caused by a "brain stem contusion.""It's the worst kind of head injury you can have," says Flo. "So they put a pressure monitor (literally drilled a hole into her skull and put in the monitor - she looked like a unicorn!) to monitor bleeding. Surgery was scheduled for the next day. One team of orthopedic surgeons worked on the left side of her body, while a second reconstructed the right."Meanwhile, half of Coahoma County began to crowd the waiting room. Wherever they were when they heard - Methodist minister Millsaps Dye stepped off of a plane and came straight to the hospital - people came to pray with the woman wearing the "PROMISES KEPT" jacket."I could only see Frances West four times a day," says Flo. "I lived my life by that clock, planning my day around those brief 30-minute visits. But they were so good to me... nurses and doctors hiding me behind the curtain so I could stay longer. I'll never forget those kind faces, those angels of mercy."Believing "God's Word is living and goes where He sends it and accomplishes what He purposes," Flo and her family read the Bible over the comatose young woman. But Frances West's prognosis remained grim: She would be in a skilled care nursing facility for the rest of her life."People told me I should accept it, prepare for it," says Flo. "But I knew that wasn't what God had told me. He'd said 'PROMISES KEPT' and He can't lie. Everyone thought I was nuts.""People think my mother is a religious fanatic," says Frances West, who says that once she finally regained consciousness, she never doubted her recovery. "I grew up knowing God doesn't do sloppy work. He wouldn't just let me live if I wasn't going to be able to tell others and give them hope too."Indeed, Frances West would recover. But not before a horrifying series of medical emergencies, any one of which would have killed most people.Told by doctors that Frances West's "lung was lacerated, more emergency surgery needed and her sternum would have to be cut open," Flo's response was, "There'll be people praying for you."Frances West lived. Every day, however, brought new struggles. When it came time to move Frances West - still in a coma - to a "transitional facility," the insurance company balked. Dr. Moomey got on the phone and guaranteed the move. Crisis by crisis, human angels came to the rescue.On a rainy December afternoon, mother and daughter left the trauma unit. On the large marker board where daily vital signs had been recorded, Flo left a message: "Thank you for using your gifts for God's glory...and by His power, Frances West Redmond will walk back through the door of this trauma unit one day. God brought me to the trauma unit to teach me how to live. We love you, Flo and Frances West."

A month later, in a tiny hospital room at the University of Tennessee-Bowld, the pair began months of back-breaking recovery. Frances West had a trac, a central line, a stomach pump. Special pneumatic boots pumped blood up her legs. Her hand was so drawn, that even after the cast was removed, most thought she'd ultimately lose that limb. Worse, an ostomy bag at her neck collected two liters of saliva every day. Frances West not only couldn't eat; she couldn't even swallow. Doctors doubted she ever would.Determined her daughter would recover - fully - Flo, with the help of nurses, lifted the unconscious 5-foot,10-inch girl to her feet every morning and made her sit up in a chair. Flo talked to her. Gave her all her baths. Made the bed. Changed soiled linens."My mother stuck by me through good times and bad," says Frances West. "And every day, I knew that if I needed something, she'd be there."Waking from a coma is rarely like what's portrayed in movies, explains Flo. "It's gradual. An eye opening one day. A fingertip moving another. But my child was still unconscious when we moved to rehab."God knew what He was doing when He got her to HealthSouth. They were wonderful: aggressive, caring. And she was so much sicker than anyone in the whole place. But they actually got her up and walked her - unconscious."Flo learned to handle not just the therapy that would ultimately continue at home, but all the medications and procedures: emptying the cath bag and trac care, mastering the stomach feeding tube, sucking fluids from the hole in Frances West's neck."The poor little thing couldn't even tell you if something was wrong," recalls Flo. "I have such a big mouth. I knew then why God had given it to me. I kept talking to her, just like she was awake. I'd take her outside in a wheelchair to feel the wind on her face, see the lights, hear conversations."It was on one of those trips through the lobby that they wheeled past a "singing" sunflower."It was one of those plastic flowers that when you spoke to it," says Flo, "it opened its little face and sang You Are My Sunshine."And Frances West smiled.

Around the first of March in 1999, Frances West started to wake up.What seemed the beginning of a glorious ending to their story actually was the start of some of the darkest days for mother and daughter."It was hell," is all Flo can say about the therapy that followed."I couldn't talk, walk or drink water," says Frances West. "My room was right next door to Topp's Bar-B-Que and I could smell that food. Mostly, I wanted water - plain old tap water - but I couldn't have it for fear the liquids would dump into my lungs and I'd drown. Try being so thirsty, you'd even suck the water from a wet washrag!""She'd beg me for water, food, even an ice chip," remembers Flo. "It was so horrible. I never ate in front of her, even sprayed my clothes with Febreeze so she couldn't smell food on me."And then began the struggle to teach Frances West to swallow. Dr. Darryl Weiman, the only doctor in Memphis trained to re-rout her esophagus, had said that if reconnection were possible, it would only come after she'd mastered that skill. After six months in rehab, Frances West would have to go home, ostomy bag still attached to her throat. On the way back to Clarksdale, mother and daughter would stop off at the trauma unit where Flo'd left the message.She locked down the wheelchair. "Stand up, baby," she commanded. "We're walking back in."

In the intervening year between her accident and the last of 15 operations, the Delta came together as never before to support Flo and the young woman the community had come to call "the miracle girl." Prayer wheels ignited fund-raisers. Every day was hard, but no one gave up."Exactly one year from the date of the wreck," says Flo, "Frances West walked out of UT-Bowld Hospital awake, reconnected - doctors had made an esophagus out of her colon - and ready to resume her life. Who but God could have planned that?"

Were this the end of the Frances West Redmond story, it'd still read like a Hollywood script. But today's chapter is even better news.As a ninth grader, she'd met football star Dale Cook at Easter on the levee at Friars Point. They dated, then parted. What the young couple didn't know then was that every morning, Flo took her coffee down the street to the tiny Methodist church and prayed for their relationship."I always knew he was the only person I'd love," smiles Frances West, hours before marrying the first fellow she ever dated.Ten years after their break-up, Cook was part of the community encouraging her recovery. Today, the young woman told she'd never walk again will stride the aisle to become his bride."I told him, as our vows say, 'in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad,' "she whispers. "I'd say he's already proven that part!"We've been through it all. But Dale and I both see a long life together watching our children grow old - and we get to do it with our best friend!"As for Flo, she's busy making certain that anyone who needs hope hears the Frances West story. Grateful to Jeanette and Tommy Johnson, the couple who came upon the wreck and stayed until the ambulance arrived, Flo has instituted "Good Samaritan" awards in their names in every school in the county. All her prayers answered, Flo is happy to "only be the nervous mother escorted down the aisle by Dr. Charles Moomey - who took Frances West off the helicopter at the trauma unit - and glad to celebrate with the many people who helped in her recovery."While other mothers might select chiffon for wedding attire, Florence Larson Redmond will be proudly wearing a battered tapestry jacket. As the bride and groom celebrate their vows, she'll be a living reminder: PROMISES KEPT.

Email Frances-West Cook