As Day Seventeen ends, Jenny was very active both physically and verbally however one of those would begin a sequence of large issues later in the day. Before that, first I would like to talk about an important task six of us on the team did last week. We all decided that we would visit the site of the crash and look at the condition of vehicle that Jenny was driving. It was not an easy decision, but it was one we knew we had to do. There were 2 main reasons why we all decided to go there. The first reason was to witness firsthand what Jenny really went through that night. The second was to find her belongings that were lost when she was airlifted from STARS. I will go in detail of what that experience was like in the next post of Jenny’s Journal on her website, but in regards to this update, we searched everywhere but we could not find her belongings and had to assume they were lost or stolen.

Until today.

All her belongings were brought back to me by Corporal Garton of the RCMP. They were in terrible condition, but everything was there and I could not be more thankful as all of us thought they were gone for good.

As for Jenny’s day, she was very active. Her right eye and right arm are still completely unresponsive but she is moving her left leg more and is in full control of her left hand to a fault – she keeps on removing her feeding tube. In fact, within a 24 hour period, she removed her own feeding tube 4 times and had to get it reinserted and brought down for X-Rays 4 times. This also means she was not able to get proper nutrition for 24 hours. She has her “cozy” mitts on which is like a boxing glove, but she somehow removes it regardless of how tight it is and then she quickly pulls out her tube even with constant watch. She is starting to grow an epithet on the floor – The Troublemaker. She still does not have clearance from the hospital staff to remove the feeding tube as they say she still needs it so it is something she has to put up with for now even though she clearly does not like it.

She was able to talk a bit more but it is clearly very difficult for her to string together the proper words to convey what she’s really trying to say. It is painful to see her become frustrated. She is able to mostly listen and understand full sentences at a slower conversation speed so knowing that, it must be very hard for her to not be able to string her own proper sentences. I believe she is aware that her brain is simply not cooperating fully right now as some of the few short sentences she was able to say today also happened to really break my heart:

“I’m not in a good situation.” and

“I can’t smile.”

Only time can reveal just how much of Jenny will return to us from the ongoing battle inside her own mind but I know she is still fighting continuously to get back as many pieces of herself as she can.