Laura Ashleigh Smith doesn’t remember the accident.
And perhaps she never will.
What she does know is she faces months of therapy and treatment to return to the life she once had as a student at Tri-County Technical College, a server at Brioso, a friend, sister, daughter, a driver, an athlete. To reach her dream of becoming a physical therapist.
Anyone who her knows the fact she can walk on a treadmill or balance on a beam is nothing short of a miracle.
Sometime around 3 a.m. on Dec. 10, Smith tumbled down a flight of steep, carpeted stairs, 13 steps to a wood floor. The crash alerted her roommate, who called 911 to the Clemson townhouse. Airlifted to Greenville Memorial Hospital, the then 19-year-old split open her scalp, cracked the base of her skull and bruised her brain.
Her parents, Kelli and Scott, asleep in their Easley home, didn’t hear their phones. A dispatcher at Croswell Fire Department, where Scott Smith is chief, alerted them by setting off his fire pager.
They arrived at the hospital at 6 a.m. to find their child – the oldest of three daughters – unresponsive but breathing on her own. Over the next days, with Smith in a coma, doctors and family watched numbers. Sophisticated instruments tracked vital signs but also showed if her brain was swelling.
It was. The risk of stroke grew. Surgery offered the only hope.
Doctors said they might have to remove part of her brain. They removed a piece of skull as big as half a sheet of paper on her right side to give the swelling a place to go, but didn’t have to cut into her brain. They presented odds – 50-50 – on whether she would regain consciousness or remain in a vegetative state. There were moments when life became uncertain.
Then came an eye flicker. She opened her eyes.
And every day since has been another step toward her past life.
At first the left side of her face drooped and her previously dazzling smile became hidden behind injury. Now her smile lights up her face.
When the ventilator was removed and she could talk she said, “Where’s my phone?”
Three weeks in ICU, slightly more than a day on the brain injury floor, Smith was transferred to the Greenville Hospital System’s Roger C. Peace Rehabilitation Hospital, the only accredited brain injury rehabilitation program in South Carolina.
The hospital treated 119 patients diagnosed with traumatic brain injury last year.
Smith celebrated her 20th birthday there. On Jan. 14, she was discharged and the family was finally able to celebrate Christmas.
Smith spends most of three days a week at the Roger C. Peace Outpatient Center, which treated 171 patients with traumatic brain injury in 2010.
At the center, she works out. A star soccer player when she attended Easley High School, she has an advantage over others because she is so strong physically, said her physical therapist Elizabeth Holzbach.
Holzbach said the challenge in treating head injuries is that no two patients face the same obstacles in the aftermath.
Smith also spends time in occupational therapy. On a recent day she made a necklace – an intricate design especially for survivors.
She has trouble organizing and sometimes leaves out details needed to understand a story.
But she’s a fighter – her family says headstrong – a trait that will serve her well in the months ahead.
Doctors don’t know how far she’ll go. They’ve said it is likely there will be some lifelong limitations, but she has defied every prognosis so far. They expected an ear injury to result in moderate hearing after a couple of surgeries. She met that mark after one surgery.
She had no balance and can kick a soccer ball. But it is a struggle.
“I’m exhausted, even the smallest things. I could sleep after walking to the mailbox,” Smith said.
Asked if anything about her had changed since the accident, she said she’s afraid of stairs and she can’t get enough chocolate milk, something she never even liked before.
On Wednesday, she’ll be in surgery again, this time to replace the section of skull taken out. It’s another big step, a big one because she’ll lose the blue helmet she has worn to protect her brain.
“I’m going to give it to the lowest bidder,” she said.
Tags: GHS, head injury, Lyn Riddle
