Truly thankful

On Thursday the Schwietermans will gather to celebrate Thanksgiving. Like many families, it’s tradition to go around the table taking turns saying what they are thankful for.
“This year is going to be an easy one for us,” said Karen Schwieterman, looking across the dining room table at her daughter, Janelle. “We know what we’re thankful for this year.”
“This Thanksgiving, I think it’s just going to mean a little more to us this year.”
*****
Janelle is always on time.
So when she was 20 minutes behind schedule to meet her dad, Mike, and wasn’t answering her phone, he started tracing the route back toward their house to look for her. At about the same time Janelle’s mom, Karen, was getting ready to head out to look as well.
That’s when Mercer County Sheriff Jeff Grey pulled into the driveway of the Schwietermans’ Sharpsburg Road home.
Janelle had been in an accident, the car she was driving essentially crushed. She wasn’t expected to survive.
“When Sheriff Grey came to our door and told my mom that her daughter had been involved in a very bad accident and had been life-flighted I dropped to my knees and started crying,” said Janelle’s sister, Olivia.
“Pretty much it felt like my heart just stopped. I couldn’t even breathe.”

The accident
Thursday, April 5 — Holy Thursday — was a day off for Fort Recovery Local Schools, but the junior varsity softball team was scheduled to play a game in Coldwater. So Janelle left her home in the mid-afternoon, heading to Fort Recovery High School to catch the bus to the game.
On her way she was involved in an accident, a minor one, her car leaving the north side of Sharpsburg Road near St. Peter’s Road and striking a pole. Janelle was OK, but her car would no longer function.
She called her coach, Marie Osterholt, to say she wouldn’t make it to the game. Then she called her dad, and then her sister.
Olivia picked up Janelle at the accident scene and drove back home. The plan from there was to meet Mike at the family farm, located at the intersection of Blaine Pike and county road 300 South in Jay County, and then bring the truck and trailer back to haul off the disabled vehicle.
Janelle climbed in her sister’s car and drove off. That’s the last thing she remembers.
*****
Mike and Karen arrived on the accident scene within seconds of each other — Mike driving west on Fox Road from Indiana and Karen riding in Grey’s vehicle from the other direction.
“I looked at the semi and I saw the car and I turned my head really fast,” said Karen, still wincing at the thought seven months later, “because it was the worst thing I’d ever seen in my life. It just looked like the semi devoured the car. There was nothing.”
Janelle, driving Olivia’s 2008 Pontiac G5, had stopped at the intersection of Fox Road and Ohio 49. When she entered into the intersection attempting to continue west, a semi going an estimated 55 miles per hour slammed into the passenger side of the car.
The car was a mangled mess of red metal crushed around Janelle’s body. The glove compartment had slammed into the steering column and wedged between her legs. Emergency workers had to cut the car apart in order to get her out.
By the time Mike and Karen arrived, Janelle had already been taken from the scene by helicopter. But the expressions of the emergency workers told the story.
“The guys looked pretty somber,” said Mike.
He and Karen were there for less than a minute before they departed for Lima, where they would meet Janelle at St. Rita’s Hospital. Karen, who her husband says is normally a cautious driver, begged her husband to drive faster the entire way.
“That was the longest ride of our life,” said Karen. “I was praying on the way there, just let her be alive when we get there.”

The uncertainty
Janelle was alive when her parents arrived, though barely.
“You reached out and touched her hand and it was just cold,” said Karen. “There was nothing. It was just cold.”
Janelle had been placed in an induced coma for her own safety, the hope being that it would give her brain the necessary rest to recover.
Traumatic brain injury topped a laundry list of problems. She also had respiratory failure, a collapsed left lung and a lacerated spleen.
Her jaw was broken, as were two ribs. She had a separated shoulder. And there were cuts and bruises all over her body, glass still embedded in her swollen face.
Mike and Karen were told they could not sleep in Janelle’s room. Karen stayed anyway.
“I said, ‘OK, I’m not going to sleep,’” Karen said. “So I just sat up in a chair with my eyes open.”
“She didn’t sleep for about two days,” Mike added.
 Janelle made it through the night, but when running tests the next day doctors discovered she had significant narrowing of her carotid artery. They were worried the injury might lead to a catastrophic blood clot in her brain. So she was transferred, again via helicopter, to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton as a precaution in case she the situation with the artery became more serious.
All her family could do was wait, and pray.
Three days after the accident, on Easter Sunday, Janelle was brought out of the coma.

The recovery
When Janelle was taken off of the ventilator that was helping her breathe a day later, on Mike’s birthday, her parents were relatively sure she would live. What her life would be like was anyone’s guess.
The Rancho Los Amigos Cognitive Scale is one of several used to evaluate brain injury. It runs from Level I, in which a patient has no response to pain, touch, sound or light, to Level X. Janelle was a Level II.
“They said there would be some healing, but the extent of it, they didn’t know,” Karen said. “They didn’t tell us. They don’t tell you any of that. … They say every patient is different.”
Janelle didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t eat.
If nurses tried to sit her up on the edge of the bed, she’d just fall over.
“It was hard to take it,” said Mike. “Seeing her playing sports and being so strong and then her first physical therapy she couldn’t even walk on her own.”
Through daily physical, occupational, speech and recreational therapy she re-learned how to live. The tasks were designed to stimulate her mind and body, simple things like playing cards and games, doing laundry, making pudding and doing math homework.
“I was pretty much like a baby and had to re-learn everything,” said Janelle.
And she did, quickly.
Janelle and her parents tell story after story about doctors and nurses who were amazed by the speed of her recovery.
Karen recalls being stopped in the hallway by a nurse.
“’I just have to tell you, that’s an act of God right there,’” Karen recalls the nurse telling her. “’That’s a miracle. She is a living, breathing miracle.’”
The dentist who was checking the progress of Janelle’s jaw fracture had a similar sentiment. He wanted to take a picture with her.
“He said, ‘I want my staff to know what a miracle looks like.’”
Three weeks after the accident, Janelle was released from Miami Valley. She went to her team’s softball game that night. A day later, she walked into the gym at the Fort Recovery High School prom.

The future
Though she knows her parents don’t like to hear it, Janelle enjoyed her time at Miami Valley.
She doesn’t remember most of the scary stuff. For her, the facility is the place where she recovered, the place where she got her life back.
Therapy was an enjoyable break from tedious days of sitting in a hospital room.
“I just liked doing something. I’m just not used to sitting there,” said Janelle, who was kept company by her parents and siblings Nick, 27, Kristen, 25, Sylvia, 21, and Olivia, 19. “You just sat there all day. Doing therapy, I actually had something to do and to be somewhere.
“I think it helped because the people were so nice. I loved going to all my therapies. It kind of helped me decide what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
She wants to be a physical therapist.
Janelle has a lot to look forward to.
She wasn’t able to return to the school basketball team, but will be playing for the CYO squad. In the spring, she plans to play for the FRHS softball team.
“I’m excited. I love it,” said Janelle, who was the Tribe’s starting shortstop before her accident. “I was disappointed not playing basketball, but the doctors said not to. …
“I’m really super glad that I can play softball.”

Appreciating life
Janelle is not the same person she used to be. That would be impossible.
She still has some cognitive issues, such as occasionally having trouble finding the words she wants to use. She has to work harder at school and take more diligent notes, although she’s still on track to be Fort Recovery’s salutatorian when she graduates in May.
She said she appreciates family more, and seeks to cherish every moment she has with them.
At 18, Janelle’s age defines her as an adult. What she has gone through has made her one.
“I just know I’m lucky,” she said. “So many prayers helped. I easily should have been gone. I know it.”
Those are hard words for a parent to hear.
“You cry because you know it’s true,” Karen said, “but you’re so thankful that she is here.”[[In-content Ad]]