With the will of a Moose
When Jesse Tennyson survived a catastrophic brain injury 20 years ago, her inner determination was needed more than ever
Her father called her Moose. An endearing nickname for a streak of stubbornness that Jesse Tennyson had in her even before she came into the world.
One day, when she was about 12 years old, she climbed high up into a fir tree in her backyard. At the time, living in British Columbia, she took great pleasure in outdoing anyone, especially her younger brother, Michael. And on this day, she challenged nine-year-old Michael and her six-year-old sister, Allyson, to do better. Climb higher.
Allyson chickened out. Michael climbed past Jesse’s height but then couldn’t get down. His screams alerted their parents, Kim and Doug Hicks. Doug scaled the tree and safely retrieved his son and after a good scolding, Kim and Doug thought the tree-climbing challenge was done.
A while later, Kim was making dinner when she glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of Jesse at the very top of the tree, some 30 feet in the air.
In her words: “She was swinging back and forth like it was a ride at Disneyland.”
Kim and Doug raced outside in a state of parental panic.
They looked up.
From high above, Jesse shouted the words that would come to define her life: “Don’t ever tell me I can’t do it.”
And then with monkey-like agility, she lowered herself to the ground.
“All through her life, whenever she was told this might be something you can’t do, or it might be real difficult to do, she would bring that Moose attitude out,” said Kim Graziano (she has since remarried).
“And most of the time she would accomplish it.”
Twenty years ago, it just might have saved her life.
The family had just moved back to Ontario, and started a life in Niagara Falls, when on Saturday, Nov. 7, 1998, Jesse was a passenger on a motorcycle that was hit head on by a car on Stanley Avenue. The impact propelled 19-year-old Jesse some seven metres into the air, before she landed in a limp heap of black leather on the pavement.
A witness thought she was a bag of garbage.
“Then he realized it was a body,” said Kim. The man manoeuvred his vehicle in front of Jessica to stop other cars from running over her.
She was taken to the Greater Niagara General Hospital. Her mother leaned in close to Jesse: “I told her she was in a bad accident and was going to sleep for awhile.
“If you hear us, we love you and will be there when you wake up.”
A tear rolled down Jesse’s face and gave her mother hope.
She was taken by ambulance to Hamilton General Hospital, where her family stood by her bedside and contemplated a heartbreaking reality: their beautiful Moose might die.
She had suffered a catastrophic brain injury. Was in a coma, on a respirator. No one thought she’d survive the night.
She did, and then something happened. Five days into that coma, she opened her eyes. Barely.
Her body was broken. Her left leg was broken in two places and needed plates, then titanium rods to hold it together. The skin on her left leg had melted as it lay on the hot exhaust pipe of the bike after the collision. Doctors replaced it with skin off her right thigh.
Eventually, her physical injuries healed.
But her brain was broken too. And doctors made a grim prediction: Jesse would never have a normal, fulfilled life. She would never live on her own. Never get married. Never have children.
Her brain would likely be so damaged, she’d never realize everything she’d lost.
Had they witnessed Jesse high up in that fir tree years ago and heard her words of defiance, they might have offered a different opinion.
Hope and wishful thinking aside, Kim just knew her Moose would beat the odds. She told doctors: “You don’t know what this child is like. She is too stubborn. She doesn’t know how to fail.”
And when Jesse learned to speak again, she refused the medical prognosis. “I told them they were wrong,” she said.
Twenty years later, Jesse has done everything she was told would never happen. At 39, she is now Jessica Tennyson, a wife and mother who lives a beautifully ordinary life in St. Catharines.
The years between her accident and the Jesse of today are a narrative of perseverance.
An insurance settlement allowed her the best therapies and supports available, and her family has walked the journey by her side.
Indeed, the journey was — and is — not easy.
People who do not know Jesse or her story likely won’t notice anything remarkable about her. She is a stayat-home mom. She walks her son to daycare. Shops for groceries. Makes dinner.
But Jesse very much lives with an injured brain.
In fact, it’s actually in accomplishing these everyday activities that Jesse is most remarkable. She has learned to adapt so well, that to everyone else she appears normal.
“It will never go away,” said Jesse. “A brain injury is for life. It’s not like a broken bone that heals.”
She met Mike Tennyson, her husband, one afternoon while she was at Tim Hortons having coffee with a friend. It was a setup. Her friend had asked Mike to casually drop by.
Mike came to their table and introduced himself as Mr. T.
Jessica laughed. He looked nothing like the muscular, gold jewellery wearing Mr. T of the 1980s TV show, “The A-Team.” “He was this skinny white guy,” she said.
They bought a house together and eventually married in 2015.
The brain injury interfered with her hormones and it took years for her menstrual cycle to return. Even then, because of the medications she was taking, including anti-seizure drugs, it was not safe to get pregnant.
After that, it just didn’t happen. Pushing 40, she was worried. She visited a fertility clinic for a consultation.
The following month, she was pregnant, on her own.
The pregnancy was high risk. And sure enough, when she was six months, 24 weeks and five days along, her water broke unexpectedly. At home.
Baby Jake was born. He weighed 936 grams and began his life in the neonatal intensive care unit at McMaster Children’s Hospital.
Jesse was not allowed to touch him. So, she prayed: “Please make it. Please make it.
“I just kept praying. Please. Please. Please.
“You’re everything I dreamed of my entire life.”
Kim offered her tiny grandson some words of inspiration, too: “Be as strong as your mother.”
Jake lived. He is now three years old.
For years after her accident, Jesse grappled with an inescapable, unresolved question: “I survived. I’ve just got to figure out what the reason was.”
She had Jake. And he was the answer.
But Jesse does not live with her head in the clouds. Her feet are planted firmly in reality — being a mother and having an acquired brain injury is very difficult.
“People like me don’t have kids,” she said. “It’s a lot of responsibility, a lot of things to remember.”
The physical — and mental — fatigue can be exhausting.
Routine and repetition are a lifeline.
If there’s a disruption in her routine, she’ll have trouble remembering what else she was supposed to do that day.
Jake goes to daycare the same three days, every week. On those mornings, they do the same exact routine to get him ready.
Jesse leaves reminder notes for herself throughout the house and sets alerts on her iPad. When Jake had an ear and eye infection and needed medication, she plugged everything into the device. Kim offered her reminder calls, too.
Jesse has support from an occupational therapist whenever she needs it. They might get groceries together; Jesse does not drive. She shops on the same day, at the same store, starting at the same aisle.
The other day, she was sure she needed ketchup but it was not on her shopping list.
Turns out, it was on a previous list and she had bought it the week before.
But her brain told her she needed it. And it wouldn’t let go of the thought.
The therapist reminded her to stick to the list.
Jesse did, and sure enough, there was a bottle in the cupboard when she got home.
Her brain has trouble filtering out extraneous noise and activity, making it difficult to focus. And there’s lots of superfluous junk food for the senses at a grocery store. Background music. People brushing past. A person stocking the shelves. Food aromas from a sample booth. Everything is a distraction.
“It’s like someone constantly poking you to get your attention somewhere else.”
Her memory is like a book. There are pages and pages of memories, but they’re disorganized and not easily accessible.
And since forever, she has kept a journal.
She records moments in her day because by tomorrow, she will likely forget.
“It’s terrifying for me,” she said.
“I wake up every morning and go to bed every night fearing to f---ing God that I’ll forget who I am.”
Her journal is an external memory. Reading through the entries will cue her to remember a moment, an event. Photo albums do the same, except that sometimes she’s not sure if a recalled moment is an original memory, or a recollection based on a photo she’s seen or a story someone has told.
She remembers her wedding. She remembers saying, “I do.” She remembers kissing Mike.
“Mike looked great. He wore a tuxedo,” she said.
But is that a true memory? Or something that has become a memory from having looked through her photo album many times?
She goes to another room and finds the journal she started when Jake was in the ICU at McMaster.
Jan. 4, 2016. She reads: “I’m so tired …. And scared for Jake.” A memory triggered, tears well in her eyes. “I had no idea it would do that,” she said.
Jesse has now spent half of her life with an acquired brain injury.
And to anyone who knows her well, she is still their Moose.
Determined. Stubborn. Obstinate (her mother offers this word, then laughs). And empowered to live life on her terms.
Kim sees the same headstrong perseverance in her grandson.
She told her daughter, “Good luck, he’s a mini you.”
And then she suggested that Jesse chop down the tree in her front yard.
Cheryl.Clock@niagaradailies.com
905-225-1626 | @Standard_Cheryl