Woman coming back from coma

[ Originally published on: Thursday, March 29, 2007 ]

NORTHAMPTON -- Less than three months after being flown home to Massachusetts in a near-coma, 21-year-old Danielle Forkin can move her head and arms, can eat without feeding tubes and can talk for the first time since her brain injury in Arkansas around Thanksgiving.

The former Turners Falls resident, who was flown back with help from a community fundraising effort in Greenfield, surprised her mother, Barbara Potts of Brattleboro, Vt., with a phone call a couple of weeks ago.

'I got a call at work from her speech therapist, and he said, 'I have somebody who needs to speak with you.' The next thing I knew, Danielle was on the phone crying and saying, 'Hi, Mom.' I started crying. I was surprised to say the least.'

With a pair of blankets covering her, Forkin relaxed recently in her wheelchair in a corner of the lobby of the Northampton Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, where she's been a pediatric patient since Jan. 2. Potts and her husband, Joseph, sat nearby and beamed at their daughter and reflected on the rapid progress she's made with the help of physical, occupational and speech therapists on staff.

'It's a miracle,' said Potts, who had stood by her daughter's Van Buren, Ark., bedside for 5ﾽ weeks, pleading to have her transferred to a Massachusetts treatment center, where should could be examined by a neurologist, treated and be rehabilitated. Forkin's unexplained brain injury occurred after staying in nearby Alma, Ark., with her boyfriend, whom she'd followed down from Turners Falls several weeks earlier.

Today, visiting at the rehabilitation center, as she and her husband do four or five days a week, Potts says, 'It's hard to find the words. She's already exceeding what we expected.'

For her part, Forkin -- dressed in a pale yellow T-shirt, with her long brown hair pulled back and her face full and rested, speaks softly but clearly, if in monosyllables.

How's she feeling? 'Good.'

Can she move her arms? 'Some.'

What does she do in her musical therapy sessions? 'We sing.'

When Potts explains how well the Northampton facility has worked at providing multiple therapy sessions to stimulate her daughter, she adds, 'As you can see, it's worked.' Her daughter volunteers, 'I like to think so.'

Her father, prompting her gently, describes his own mood as 'euphoria.' She continues to make progress. She's talking up a storm.' His daughter has gained nine pounds in the last week or so, he says, after having lost 30 pounds since being stricken with the anoxic encephalopathy -- the loss of oxygen to her brain.

Although Forkin can offer the date of her birthday in June and can say the age of her 17-month-old son, Troy, who is brought to visit each weekend from Vermont, she has no memory of being in Arkansas, no memory of the American Medical Response air ambulance that carried her from Fort Smith, Ark., to Westover Air Base in Chicopee, no memory of her arrival in Northampton.

If no one is certain of what led to Forkin's brain injury, there's also little idea how much recovery to expect.

Dr. Gregory Park, the physiatrist, or rehabilitation specialist, who treats Forkin and most of the other brain-injured patients at the Northampton facility, stops by to visit as he walks through the lobby and tells her, 'I could always ask for more, but all things considered, you've exceeded my expectations.'

Despite 'pretty severe damage' to the brain, 'It's hard to say where you'll end up,' Park tells her as she looks up at him seriously. 'With anoxic brain injuries, classically we don't see a whole lot change until several months out. I've seen people with a lot of atrophy do very well, and I've seen people with very little atrophy do very poorly. You're hard to pigeonhole.'

Potts, who recalls weeks of her daughter being semi-conscious and having a couple of seizures, also isn't sure how much to hope for in her daughter's recovery, concentrating instead on the rapid progress.

'It's hard to say what to expect,' she said. 'I know what I'm hoping for her. Any recovery she makes, I believe, is very huge. I'd certainly hope for a full recovery, but only time will tell.'

Forkin, who worked at Lightlife Foods and briefly at Judd Wire Co. in Turners Falls, has especially been enjoying extended visits with her son. (A trust fund is being set up with the approximately $2,100 remaining from the $9,600 fund raised in a campaign organized by MoJo's nightclub owner Art Johnson, the Greenfield businessman says.)

She's also been enjoying visits from her brother and four sisters, Potts reports. And she particularly enjoys musical therapy sessions with the 'Ocean Drum,' a narrow, two-headed percussion instrument that creates the sound of ocean waves when tilted.

But now, after waiting patiently for the bag of Chinese food that her parents have had delivered for their dinner together, she tells the visiting reporter, 'Stop asking me questions.'

It's a gentle reminder that Forkin, at last, is able to ask for what she needs. To her mother, it's a reason to be thankful.

'Every day, there's something more,' Potts says. 'They're all things we take for granted and don't even think of on a daily basis. For her, it's a gigantic bound.'

You can reach Richie Davis at rdavis@recorder.com or (413) 772-0261 Ext. 269

 

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