As Day Sixty-Six ends, I was harshly reminded that brain injury improvement is something that isn’t linear and will sometimes be two steps backwards and one step forwards. For the first time since Jenny arrived to Riverview, Jenny cannot recall any memories of yesterday. She cannot remember using the tablet at S.L.P, the news of her X-ray results or her upcoming appointment at Health Sciences Centre. I don’t quite exactly know how to feel about this as it means the time and moments I had with her yesterday were forgotten. I had become complacent in that memory lapses would no longer happen as they had not occurred for awhile yet it has happened once more.

Today at rehab, Jenny once again played special basketball at Physiotherapy like she did last week. However, Jenny has not made noticeable improvement and this frustrated her greatly. Jenny could still barely hold onto the ball with her right hand and cannot move it at all – she cannot even throw the ball into a basket that’s touching her feet.

I had a moment today to talk with some staff at Riverview where we were discussing her right arm and it’s current limitations which led the conversation to how her right leg, right arm and right eye were much more severely damaged from the accident. This lead to talking about accident itself and how Jenny’s vehicle had tumbled into the field from the force of impact and flipped several times. We know now that it ultimately landed on it’s passenger side which meant Jenny’s right side was forced to be pressed against the twisted metal and debris.

We talked about how, other than the vehicle ideally landing on it’s wheels, landing on it’s passenger side is actually the second most ideal scenario. If Jenny had landed on her driver side her body would have been crushed by all the debris and twisted metal. If she landed upside down, she would likely not be at rehab at all. This morbid yet realistic discussion sort of came out of nowhere due to a sequence of events but it made me realize that out of 4 possible scenarios on how a vehicle lands after flipping there was a 50% chance of it landing either upside down or on the driver side. If it had been either of those it very well could have meant that Jenny would not be here in rehab at all.