‘Christmas miracle’ for mom of brain injury victim
Woman disabled in accident communicates on her own for first time since age 15
HALIFAX— In what her mother calls a “Christmas miracle,” a Nova Scotia woman who suffered a catastrophic brain injury in a 1996 car accident communicated one-on-one with her mother for the first time in 21 years.
Louise Misner said her 37-year-old daughter, Joellan Huntley, used eye-motion cameras and software on an iPad to respond to a comment from Misner about her clothes.
Huntley has been severely disabled since she was 15, unable to walk or talk and fed through a tube. She has always responded to family members’ presence by making sounds, but was unable to communicate any thoughts.
The breakthrough occurred during a Christmas Day visit at the Kings Regional Rehabilitation Centre in Waterville, N.S.
“I said ‘Joellan I like your new Christmas outfit you got on,’ ” Misner said in a telephone interview on Friday.
Misner said her daughter then used the technology to find an icon for a short-sleeve shirt.
“And then she said no, and went to a long-sleeve shirt because she was trying to tell me what she had on.”
Misner said her reaction was immediate to what had been a longhoped-for personal communication.
“Christmas miracle,” she said. “It was God’s way of telling me that she’s finally achieved what she needed to since the accident.”
Huntley was thrown from a car that had swerved to avoid a dog that was running loose along a road in Centreville, N.S., on April 18, 1996.
Huntley’s family eventually won a $1-million insurance settlement as a result of the crash, but by 2014 they found themselves embroiled in a court battle with the province’s Community Services Department, which sought to claw back the money for past and future care costs.
An undisclosed out-of-court settlement was reached in April 2015.
Misner said the settlement money helped the family purchase the computer equipment she is now using with the help of a speech pathologist.
Misner said one of Joellan’s nurses told them she is “doing really well with it.”