BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
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Chandler |
The memory of a horrible accident hangs in Donna Chandler's mind each time she looks at her daughter.
Sometimes just getting into the car sends her thoughts spinning about all the terrible things that could happen. Then she thinks how blessed she is that she survived every parent's nightmare. Five months ago, a hit-and-run accident left her 21-year-old daughter, Tara Chandler, in a coma.
Donna Chandler wasn't even sure Tara would live, much less walk or talk or laugh that same laugh. Today, the mother from Clermont County's Union Township has reason to celebrate.
She has her daughter back.
Donna Chandler has always been a worrier. Ever since her children got their driver's licenses, the ring of the phone at odd hours made her anxious.
The call she dreaded most came on Easter weekend.
Her oldest daughter, Tara, was critically injured when a semi crushed into her car in the northbound Interstate 275 ramp from Beechmont Avenue. The truck kept going and has never been found. A passing stranger found help. Doctors later told the family she was in grave condition with a severe brain injury. She had fallen into a coma.
It was the darkest day of Donna Chandler's life.
She couldn't bear to look at pictures of her daughter's crumpled car. It was hard enough to look at her daughter.
Tara Chandler's blondish-brown hair was cut off to reveal a gash over her left ear. Her whole left side appeared paralyzed. The young woman who had just gotten engaged -- who wanted to browse for a new house the weekend of her wreck -- looked as though she might never wake up.
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Tara Chandler, right, works with speech pathologist Kris Faris at Drake Center.
(Michael Snyder photo)
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Donna Chandler would walk out of her hospital room and have what she called "little crying fits." Nurses and family members tried to calm her. In the days that followed, she would sit by her daughter's hospital bed, talk to her, pray and wait.
Tara Chandler slowly improved to a milder level of coma. Her mother learned a whole vocabulary of medical terms. Each day, Donna Chandler's mood hung on the slightest sign that things were getting better.
She marked each milestone in a journal that hospital guests would sign. May 8: Coma upgraded. May 18: Tara stuck out her tongue. It felt like keeping a baby book.
"It kind of hit us we were writing the same things," Donna Chandler said. "She sat up by herself. She took a step. It was like starting over."
"Tara's talking'
A phone call brought Donna Chandler the worst news about her daughter, but it also brought the best.
It was May 27, the day of her younger daughter's high school graduation. After a month of focusing on Tara, the family was going to celebrate Amy's big day.
That evening, 18-year-old Amy went to visit her sister. But she couldn't wait to get home to tell her mother of the latest development. She picked up the phone in the hospital room and dialed home.
"Tara's talking," she said.
Donna Chandler didn't believe it. Amy wanted her sister to get better so badly that she thought Amy was exaggerating.
"Amy, we were just there this morning," she said. "She wasn't talking then."
But the next day, Donna Chandler realized she was right. Tara could whisper.
"I think the whole family knew within 15 minutes," Donna Chandler said. "As long as it took to make the phone calls."
As Tara Chandler regained her memory, she also became more confused. She recognized friends and family, but sometimes she'd forget their names.
The end of June marked another milestone as she began to walk again and was allowed to move back home. Amy took a smaller bedroom so her sister could have her old room back.
The family has helped Tara practice her organizational skills, such as taking phone messages and marking everything on a calendar. "Her short-term memory now is affected," Donna Chandler said. "But she's still Tara. I don't really see a big difference, except that she's gotten less patient. She still laughs a lot. She looks the same except for her short hair. Everyone says it brings out her eyes."
As good as it gets
Donna Chandler is as nervous about her daughter's increasing independence as she always was.
Tara will begin driving lessons next month. She hopes to go back to work at an office supply company by December.
"She's got a way to go to get back where she was when she was working," her mother said. "But sometimes, you forget she even had an accident. Everything seems easy now."
Emotionally, the stress of the accident has taken its toll. They are together almost around the clock, and in some ways for Donna Chandler, it's like having a small child again. She's been there to help Tara to the bathroom, to fix meals and to drive her to therapy.
She also was there to support her daughter when she broke off her engagement. She was grateful that Tara found comfort in the friendship of an old boyfriend who came to see her almost every day. In many ways, things are back to the way they used to be.
"I knew that someday I would get back to normal," Tara said during a therapy session the other day at Drake Center in Hartwell. "I just didn't know it would be this soon."
And in many ways, things are better than her mother ever expected.
"It would have been easy to believe what the doctors said and think that this is as good as it gets," Donna Chandler said. "She proved them all wrong. Miracles really do happen. Tara, you're a miracle."
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