Mother, daughter take recovery one little miracle at a time
Published: April 23, 2006
When some friends found her motionless body in a ditch south of Dodge Center following a one-vehicle accident in December 2003, Brooke Freiderich, then 16, appeared to have little chance of survival.
Even after her body was stabilized, medical professionals cautioned her parents in the strongest way about her capacities.
A lot of little miracles.
“The one comment that sticks in my head the most from one of her main doctors was, ‘She may not ever be any different from what you see right here,’” said Brooke’s mother, Denise Ellingson, of rural Dodge Center, in an interview last week. “(Brooke) was just laying there, comatose, not even opening her eyes. And (the doctor) said, ‘Or, she could slowly come out of it.’”
Brooke remained in the same condition for nearly three weeks, but 18 days later, on Christmas Eve, she began to come out of the coma and opened her eyes.
She stayed in the hospital a total of five months. Over the last two years, Brooke has been slowly regaining the capacity to walk and speak.
“We’ve seen a lot of what I would absolutely call little miracles with Brooke,” Denise said. “It just gives you a calmness, and it helps you feel, ‘Keep working with her, and just let it be.’ As it comes, it’s going to get better with her. We didn’t feel that way, obviously, at the beginning, and we probably didn’t feel that way the first six or eight months, up to a year.
“I never expected to be where we are today compared to two years ago. … The second year seems to be remarkably better than the first year — I don’t know why, but we’ll take it.”
Last spring, Brooke graduated with her classmates from Triton High School.
Brooke’s cognitive functions are normal; it’s her brain’s motor skills that she’s retraining through speech therapy at Triton High School in Dodge Center. Her brain needs to learn new pathways to compensate for parts irreparably damaged.
In what has been a series of breakthroughs, Brooke has been able to learn again to say, “I love you” and the “Our Father” prayer, and recently said the words to “Happy Birthday.”
Last fall, she began lip-synching. The first song her mother found her doing one day was a well-known country song Faith Hill, “This Kiss.”
Another evening, as Denise was putting her to bed, Brooke slowly made the sign of the cross.
In physical therapy, Brooke goes with her mother one day a week to the Team Rehab center in Decorah, Iowa, and four days a week to physical therapists in Owatonna, where she is learning to walk again in a swimming pool.
Team Rehab therapist Lisa Krieg said that recovery from a brain injury is hard to predict.
“The brain, in general, is so trainable,” Lisa said. “If one area has been traumatized, there’s always a possibility it can find other pathways.”
Through physical therapy, the “anti-gravity muscles,” as Lisa called them, in Brooke’s trunk are being strengthened.
Lisa’s current goal is for Brooke to get around using a walker; then, the goal will advance to using special crutches. After that, “The sky is the limit,” Lisa said.
For Denise, a devout Catholic, the journey through her daughter’s recovery has been difficult, to say the least, yet anger hasn’t been part of it.
“I never have felt any anger,” Denise said. “People would ask me, ‘Why not?’ and it probably is because of our faith. And that’s the only reason (Brooke is) here, the only reason we’re making it through this day day.”
She’s clearly relieved at the progress.
“I don’t feel quite as anxious about everything,” she said. “Before, it was like ‘Oh my gosh, she’s not doing that or she’s not doing this, or is she ever going to?’ Now, it seems like things slowly are coming around. And so I’m taking it, and she’s taking it, as it comes. And we’re just very thankful for that.”
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