Hi. My name is Michelle and our family had a double "whammy".

We had five children Brandon 18, Brett 17, Breighann 14, Bradley 12 and Brayden 12.

We live in a rural area in Iowa, (there are few place in Iowa that aren't rural!) and Brandon's high school is about a 20 mile drive from our home. He had driven it many times before and had even driven further, but he was inexperienced in certain weather conditions. On the way to his school there is a really nasty curve on a hill and the curve is not banked. This particular curve is about nine miles from us.

On February 21, 2002 Brandon was taking his sister and a friend of hers to the 8th grade visitation day at his school. The weather was iffy that day, but nothing like a blizzard. It was just barely starting to snow. I wasn't sure if I should let him drive, but there was not one school cancellation listed on television, so I decided that if the school's weren't canceling it must be okay. Boy was that a mistake!

The kids left the house at 7:30 and I got a phone call from my other son's school at 8:35 (the older two boys went to different high school's, one private, one public). The principal called me to come in to school, (I also worked in the kitchen at the school), but he would not tell me what they needed me for; the only thing he would say was that Brett was fine.

I didn't know what to think other than they were going to fire me and for the life of me I couldn't think of anything I could have done that would have warranted such action. When I got to school, the principal was on the phone and I could see in the secretary's eyes that something was terribly wrong. Then the head janitor came out of the principal's office and got the guidance counselor and they pulled Brett out of class. I still didn't know what was wrong.

When I got there, I found out that Breighann had severe head trauma and the other girl had suffered only minor physical injuries. We later found that she suffers great emotional pain as she was the only one conscious in our car and saw both my kids thinking they were both dead.

In piecing together bits of information this is what we gather happened. (Thankfully there were several witnesses, including one from the school I worked at. That is how they found out before we did)

The road was relatively dry up to the top of the hill and when they got up there, they hit a patch of "black ice". According to one witness, the wheels of our car were turned to go down the hill the way they should be, but the rest of the car did not follow. The car slid into the other lane and hit an SUV head on. The SUV spun sideways, a car behind her bumped hers, and ours continues on past the second car and spun.

My brother is a fire chief and he spoke with the deputy that was on the scene. He told me that Brandon was killed instantly, Brieghann took the second part of the impact, and the other girl was thrown away from the impact as the car spun and that is why she did not get hurt as badly.

We have met all of the emergency workers and have gotten their stories as well. The first person there was a former EMT. When she arrived the kid's friend had been removed from our car. The EMT asked about the people in the car and were told that both were dead. Something drew her to the car and when she got there, Breighann started chewing although she was unconscious. This woman got in the car with my daughter and my dead son and sat with my daughter's head in her lap keeping her airway open until the ambulance arrived.

It took quite a while to get her out of the car. They took her to the local hospital where she had a CAT scan run and staples put in her forehead. They just wanted to get her stabilized as she had already lost a lot of blood. When they ran the CAT scan, it showed that she had a blood clot to her brain that was growing, so they sent her a bigger hospital 60 miles from us. Life Flight had been grounded due to the weather, so she had to be taken via ambulance.

The trauma team was waiting for her when she arrived so they got to work right away. They managed to remove the clot before it could break through her durra and they found a skull fracture but said that there was no brain tissue coming through it. Those were the first two good signs.

The accident happened at about eight in the morning and she did not get to her ICU room until about five that night. She remained unconscious for another two days, which is amazing considering she could have been comatose for weeks!

When she awoke, she could talk and when asked who she was and when her birthday was, responded correctly. However, when she was asked how old she was, she replied that she was two.

Today is August 13, 2002 and she is ready to start high school in a week. She is playing sports again and has gone out for drill team. There are still some cognitive problems, but every day I see more progress.

Her progress has been amazingly fast and I believe that there are several factors involved, the first one being her strong will and stubbornness. If you tell her she can't do something, she will dig her feet in a show you she can!

In my opinion, the other factors that helped are as follows. When she was in ICU, we thought everything had to remain sterile. The nurse heard my husband and I talking and told us we were more than welcome to bring things from home. The first thing we brought was an afghan my grandma had crocheted for me that Breighann loved to cuddle up with.

Even when she was unconscious, we talked to her, touched her, and played her favorite music. When she woke up, we took our cues from her as to what she could and couldn't do. Obviously, we had to be careful, but by the third day of her rehab, they had her playing one-on-one basketball.

When she came home, I got her two kittens, and that seems to have done wonders. As most of you know, TBI survivors don't always think things through before they speak their mind and Breighann is no exception. She has lost many friends due to this and I feel these kittens have been a real blessing in that regard. When she is angry and no one wants to be around her, they still love her!

We also got the internet and in my search for information on TBI found this website. The first thing that drew me to it were the games. My first thought was that these are games that really exercise the mind, so I let her play them as much as she wanted, (much to her brothers chagrin).

I know this has been a long and drawn out story, but I want people to realize that we know our daughter is the exception to the rule. When she went into the hospital, we thought she would be there for three to six months or more and she was only in 22 days, partly because her physical injuries were mainly the TBI and a broken finger, (boo hoo, right?). I want others to know that there is hope and there are things that family can do to help.

If what I have said here has helped one person, then it will all be worth it! There is hope!