Teen recovering after crash left her left side paralyzed
Lacy Johnson, 17, remembers being in the car with her best friend as her friend’s mom drove. She doesn’t remember the accident they endured, or her own desperate effort to avert it.
When her friend’s mother began to have a seizure, Johnson attempted to stop the black Kia Optima by pressing the emergency brake, a Houston Police Department report said. Family members said Johnson unbuckled her seat belt to reach the brake. The vehicle hit a curb before flipping around and striking another car on West Little York near Hempstead around 12:30 p.m. June 7.
Johnson was ejected from the vehicle when it crashed. She was rushed by helicopter to a hospital, where doctors identified injuries including a lacerated liver, a collapsed lung, severe cuts to her right elbow, and a spine broken in several places. Her skull was detached from her spine.
Johnson was paralyzed on her left side and could not speak.
“I didn’t know what to do,” said her aunt, Vickie Johnson, who has been with her niece throughout her treatment at TIRR Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation center. “I mean, a skull detached from a spine, what am I supposed to think?”
The teenager has recently begun regaining function on her left side. She practices walking, focusing on each step before reaching the end of the hall, taking a break and trying again. Johnson said she plans to leave the rehabilitation center as soon as possible.
“I’m busting out of here,” she said.
Her family is growing increasingly optimistic as Johnson’s recovery progresses. By late July she was regaining function in her left arm and leg, was speaking and breathing on her own, and had her halo brace — a head and neck support device — removed.
Kelsey Wilbur, one of her physical therapists, said Johnson has been making good progress as she practices walking, stretching and moving her left arm to grasp objects. Wilbur guides her each time she takes a step forward with her left leg, letting Johnson take the lead.
“Right at the beginning, we had to just work on her sitting by herself,” Wilbur said. “We had to practice just getting in and out of bed, figuring out what equipment she needs and just advancing every activity, making it harder and harder.”
The injured teen’s younger sisters, Olivia, Alexus, Layla and Zuri, visit her regularly and help with her therapy. Olivia might control Johnson’s wheelchair as she practices walking, for example, whle Johnson reaches toward one of her younger sister’s faces.
YaRonda Broussard, an occupational therapist, uses a volleyball to test the flexibility of Johnson’s arm. Broussard also tests the movement in Johnson’s joints by sending small electrical shocks through her arm.
“It’s an extra signal that she has to produce,” Broussard said. “Right now it’s helping produce elbow flexion. I’m having her then create pathways to squeeze and fight the machine.”
Vickie Johnson said she is ecstatic to see the progress her niece has made. She said the ordeal has been taxing, though, as the family struggles to meet the costs of an electrical wheelchair, making Johnson’s home accessible, and daily parking and food at TIRR.
“I work for United Airlines and from work I come here,” Vickie Johnson said. “The parking is a cost every day. Feeding us, because we’re not able to have meals at home, we’ve been eating out. We have to be there.”
Matt Davis, the spinal cord injury doctor taking care of Johnson, said her recovery is going smoothly, due in part to her youth and her positive attitude.
“Our ability to bring back that strength is ... pretty variable,” Davis said. “Some patients get back a lot of movement and then some patients don’t get back anything at all. So it’s always very gratifying when people start to have some real luck with recovery.”
Johnson said she will be able to go back to Cy-Ridge High School in the fall, but may have to be homeschooled for part of the school year.
“I’m patiently waiting,” she said. “My summer went down the drain. I got another chance next year.”