DISABILITIES

By Daniel J. Vance

Life seemed full of possibilities for Sarah Scantlin of Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1984: she was an 18-year-old college freshman and drill team member. Then, one September night, a drunk driver crushed her dreams as she walked to her car.

The injury caused extensive brain damage. At first, in rehabilitation, the only thing she could do was move her right foot, and later, not much else. For the next twenty years, while at Golden Plains Health Care Center, a nursing home, Sarah wasn't able to speak a word to anyone. Her face remained expressionless.

“But Sarah wasn't in a persistent vegetative state,” said her mother, Betsy, in a telephone interview. “You could say, 'There is a guy coming down the street,' and she could look out and watch the guy coming down the street. She was aware of her surroundings.” Sarah blinked answers to asked questions.

Then on February 4, 2005, impromptu, she suddenly started talking. And talking and talking.

Said Betsy, “She's very vocal now. She says, 'I want out of my room,' very loud and clear. She likes to be with people, always has. She likes being outside and in the main hallway (at the nursing home) where everyone comes by and talks to her.”

Doctors can only speculate why she began talking after twenty silent years.

“Now, every day she makes a little more progress, but it's not anything spectacular like when she started talking, not by a long shot,” said Betsy. “Her short-term memory is still lacking. Her long-term memory of things happening before she was hurt is excellent. If she knew about it (in 1984), she knows about it now.”

To this day, Sarah's legs constantly spasm. Her right foot is twisted. Yet she is alive, and alert, and talkative. Her mother said two things happened three years ago: Not only did Sarah begin to talk; she also began eating food by mouth for the first time in twenty years.

Now in therapy, she is learning to feed herself, and stand and sit up with assistance, with the goal of being able to manipulate an electric wheelchair to move around. Progress has been slow, and painful, but it is progress. Betsy attributed Sarah's newfound talking abilities in part to nursing home personnel that treated her daughter as a person rather than a thing.

Her life seems full of possibilities, again.

Contact danieljvance.com [Blue Valley Sod and Palmer Bus Service grants make this column possible.]