As Day Twenty ends, it was an overall slow and uneventful day with Jenny which is a good thing. She got repeat bloodwork due to not having nutrition for 24 hours from her infamous escapade and her report is mostly normal across the board except low levels of magnesium and potassium. She is given “Hydromorphone” multiple times a day which specifically targets her moderate and severe pains. The rest of Jenny’s stomach staples were removed today with no issues. They also changed both her arm surgery dressings, her “pick line” dressing which is the location in her arm where she receives IV (Intravenous fluids) including water, pain medication and electrolytes. There was a dressing on her right hip that I was not aware of since that area was always covered under her briefs. I was told this damaged area was likely caused from the burn of the seatbelt from the collision. It will make a full recovery but the placement causes a lot of discomfort and itchiness from Jenny as the brief also goes over this area. She did not speak much today which I accept will happen frequently as she recovers, but when she does she is speaking Tagalog more than English. I do not speak Tagalog myself, so I have to ask her to repeat it and try to record it so I can get a translation but she often does not repeat it so I apologize to her many times for not being able to understand which I notice she sometimes gets frustrated with. She is aware that her brain is not cooperating with her, and I always assure her that it’s ok and this will just take time. I often ask if she can repeat what she says in English but she cannot. The only notable line she said in English today was “Make it five”, “Make it seven” and “Make it ten” which she repeated many times. I am still trying to figure out what it means as it must be important to her because she kept saying it.

Lastly, today was my final day of coverage from MPI (Manitoba Public Insurance) for a hotel room at HSC Canad Inns located right beside the hospital. This coverage provided the foundation I needed to exist, let alone continue, following the days after the accident as it allowed me to be beside Jenny everyday without difficulty. I would like to thank Deserae, my case manager, for approving this and assisting me every step of the way.

When I first entered HSC Canad Inns, I kept a low profile but slowly over the two weeks, staff from all across the different teams at the hotel learned about Jenny’s story and began to recognize me everyday. Originally along with Nick, Jean and Harry from the Front Desk staff, I extend my sincerest thank you to Norjohn, Harpreet, Sukhmeen, and Sully for showing care, patience and compassion to Jenny and I during my stay. Jasmeet from Security, who I never spoke to before until that point, walked up to me on my final day and asked about Jenny’s progress and that truly touched my heart. Ron and Raman from Aaltos, who were there for my first meal at the hotel and even today for my last, eventually learned of Jenny’s story and supported me whenever I stopped by. Akosua from Garbonzo’s, who was always accommodating to any request, even up until 12:00am when they closed for the night. Along with Jasmine and Helen from the Canad Inns Room staff, I’d like to mention Irene and Nino who recognized me and gave their support and wishes.

After I walked past the hotel doors for the last time, I spent the rest of the day alone beside Jenny until by chance, her coworkers Sumeet and Mildred from Deer Lodge came to visit her coincidentally at the same time. We all shared a tender moment together as they reminisced with stories about working with Jenny that I’d never heard before. They were all about Jenny just being her usual vibrant, helpful, energetic self and how she was always supportive in all situations no matter how crowded or stressful.

As I bid goodbye to my home for the past two weeks, there were so many people from staff to coworkers to even the hotel guests that I want to thank for helping keep me afloat so I could continue being there for Jenny. I am still in a state of disbelief that some of the hotel guests told me they had already heard about Jenny’s story and gave me their best wishes for her recovery. Thank you everyone at HSC Canad Inns for these meaningful past two weeks. Thank you Deserae from MPI for approving my stay. Thank you dearly to the Canad Inns Housekeeping team for your amazing, unexpected support and lastly I will never forget to give my personal thank you to each and every one of you for reading these updates, for choosing to follow Jenny and for continuing to spread her story as she perseveres through her long journey to recovery.

I apologize for the delay of these updates, the limits of my body caught up to me.

As Day Eighteen ends, the X-Ray confirms her feeding tube is finally in the correct position. She is now under high alert watch because she is quickly becoming known over this hospital floor to be a lightning quick feeding tube remover with only her one left hand – even if it’s in a restricted cozy mitt. Due to her numerous and successful feeding tube removals last night, Jenny has not received any nutrition other than water over the past 24 hours. Because of this, Jenny has been asleep the whole day without waking up or even saying a single word.

The long awaited OT team (Occupational Therapy) arrived this morning and showed me some basic techniques to help alleviate strain for the muscles in her right arm and hands as they are still stuck in a bad muscle tone position where she’s constantly clutching and curling everything, including her fingers, towards her body. They are able to extend her right hand (forcefully) and she is showing signs of her muscles loosening which is good. OT said it’s still much too early to tell if its brain damage or muscle damage for this issue but that a potential reason is that because the right side of her body took the most damage in the accident, she may be subconsciously trying to protect her right side by clutching her entire right arm inwards. Half her stomach staples from the stomach surgery were removed today; I am happy to report there were no infections. The other half is supposed to be removed later by medical trainees and I am sure Jenny fully understands and is ok with that. Because of last night and her escapades, the redoing of four different insertions, with the following four transfers onto the transport bed after each insertion and the drain of four Xrays after each transport, all within a 24 hour period, her body must have been very exhausted as she was quite sweaty and dirty from the ordeal. The floor team knew this and Jenny received a very thorough wash overnight and looks much better today.

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As Day Nineteen ends, the Nurse reported that Jenny was able to say her name overnight. She was also able to say the day and month of her birthday, but not the year. When I heard of the news, I asked Jenny if she could tell me her name but this time around she said she could not. I asked again and she repeated that she could not. This is proof that her brain really does fluctuate between alertness but it is overall showing slow but positive progress.

Doctor [Redacted upon request] from the TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) team arrived this morning and told me that left side of her brain controls the right side of her body meaning that most of the brain damage she received is actually on the left side even though the surgery was on the right side. They discovered a blood clot in her lungs and she is being given “Apixaban” for it which will likely solve itself over time.

Doctor [Redacted upon request] and [Redacted upon request] from the Physiotherapy team came by in the afternoon. They were able to sit her up and test how she holds herself in a seated position. Seeing them do this broke my heart because it was the first time I got to see Jenny sitting upright since the accident and she… she looked like an exhausted rag doll with no control of her body. With [Redacted upon request] supporting her back and [Redacted upon request] supporting her neck, she just sat there with eyes closed. I could tell she was using a lot of effort to just simply sit but as I looked at her I felt such an incredible wave of sadness wash over me. Her hair was a mess, she could not open her eyes, her mouth was hanging open and with the feeding tube in her nose she just sat there at the edge of the bed barely existing. It was an extremely painful, eye opening experience to see her like this because it harshly reminded me that this is going to be a very long, difficult journey for her. As she was laid down after this activity she did not speak until near the end of the night when out of nowhere at 10:33pm she said something. I thought I misheard her so I asked if she could say it one more time just to confirm that I heard it correctly and after a brief delay she said it again for me.

“I can change... I can change.”

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.

It is 3:36am as I get back to the hotel. Jenny only now just fell asleep. This is not sustainable and I cannot write a proper update as I am shutting down as well. I was with Jenny the whole day and she was constantly trying to talk, but in very cryptic, confusing ways and she would often not repeat herself so I felt like I was constantly trying to solve a 500 piece puzzle with only 15 pieces. I could see her brain really trying to figure out how to say things properly but she is not saying proper words, often combining half of words to create new ones and she often gets frustrated. Her face was frequently furrowed or as if in pain. I believe she keeps trying to talk about the crash that happened to her and is reliving the moment in her head. This is why I couldn’t leave her for the whole day, but also why I had no chance to write anything because she was consistently trying to talk. When her face was in pain I could not focus on writing but instead only focus on her. This is why there is no official update today. I will rest now and make sure to do my best to write a better update tomorrow.

As Day Fourteen ends, there is more good news. First about Jenny’s condition, I am so excited to finally write that she is trying to speak even further. Her responses range from gibberish to being able to respond in simple answers. They are also in English and Tagalog. I am so happy to see her brain is slowly repairing itself. I began to talk to her enthusiastically but the Nurse warned me not to overload her brain with stimulus or information so I had to reign myself in. Between the incomprehensible noises I cannot quite understand, she is able to say “I want sing a song” many times, and “Make it seven”, “Make it ten” and she also tried to count down from “Nine eight seven six five” and stopped so I asked her what’s next she said “Four” and I asked her what’s next and she said “Three” and I was so happy. I asked her what’s next and she said “Can I poo now?”. Oh no. When I sent that last part to our small team everyone had a laugh but also said that it is very good news she knows and understands when there’s an urge. Near the end of the night, Jenny was able to say “Thank you.” she then followed it up with “I wanted to say thank you.” and “Thank you to everyone.” and then finally said “Thank you.” one last time before going to sleep. I was able to capture this incredible moment on video and will find a way to upload it to a private Youtube channel shortly and link it here.

Video is uploaded here: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/AMZR8dOSXxA

Moving forward there will be a change in the Day X titles. Even though this post says Day Fourteen, Jenny has been in the hospital for 17 days. The reason for this difference is because “Day One” was the day we first launched her GoFundMe page and originally these updates were written for all the invaluable supporters and followers. However, I will now be changing the title of the next update to jump directly to Day Seventeen to match how many days she has been at the hospital. Many people have told me that the first 72 hours following an accident of this magnitude is the most critical and statistically the chance of people succumbing to their wounds during this time is at its highest but if they make it past the first 72 hours then the chance of them succumbing significantly drops. I feel like the Days titles jumping over these first few critical days does not properly recognize the intense and insurmountable battle Jenny fought during those life-threatening hours so the next update will jump forward to match how many days she has been in the hospital.

As Day Thirteen ends, there is a sense of relief over some new information I received that involves Jenny, but this information is not related to her condition so first I’d like to go over her condition today. Jenny is now beginning to talk, albeit very broken and mostly unintelligible but she is able to string together simple responses. This is a tremendous step forward as it means her brain is beginning to repair itself. The nurse warned me that because Jenny is beginning to talk, if she starts becoming agitated or more aggressive, this is actually a good thing because it’s been proven over many studies that those who go down this route when beginning to speak have better recoveries than those who just remain silent. I am told I have to keep in mind that it may be hard for me to see her become angry, agitated and aggressive, but ultimately it is something that is better than the alternative. The Neurosurgery team came by tonight and signed off meaning their care is not needed at this point. They have written that neurologically, it looks like Jenny can make a decent recovery. Weeks ago I could only hope to write that line and I am so relieved, so incredibly relieved to be able to write that now. Jenny, with her unending determination is still fighting inside her own mind every single second and granting herself the opportunity to get pieces of herself back. Lastly, the new information I received about Jenny was a long awaited phone call I received from the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) who were the team to investigate the accident. Jenny is not being considered, in any way, to have fault in the collision. The full investigation is still ongoing and the final report will take quite some time before being released due to procedures that still need to be done. My utmost thanks to Corporal Garton, Corporal Light and Constable Maloy for their work and cooperation. They also told me Jenny is in their thoughts and prayers with departing words that made me put my hand over my heart as I heard it – “It is unfair that in life, people can do all the right things yet still have something tragic happen to them to no fault of their own.”

As Day Twelve ends, Jenny’s day today was uneventful. In this case, uneventful is not a good thing. The ophthalmologist team that I was told would arrive today to revisit her eyes and their condition did not show up. I am desperate to know anything about the condition of her right eye as it still does not respond, does not open, and does not react to stimulus such as the flashlight test. I do understand that Health Sciences Center holds thousands of patients and a part of me acknowledges that Jenny is just one of those thousands, but I was told two days ago that today, October 16, the ophthalmologist team would come and review her eyes. I waited anxiously but patiently for two days only to be greeted by no one. As for Jenny’s vitals for the day, respiratory wise she looks ok and her skin is doing well according to [Redacted upon request], the nurse assigned to Jenny for this rotation. [Redacted upon request] took some time out of her busy schedule to hear a little bit about Jenny’s story and she was very empathetic and caring which meant a lot to me. Jenny will starting taking oral anti coagulate for blood clot avoidance to prevent pulmonary embolism for 7 days then her blood will be monitored again. She is scheduled to see the Plastics team “eventually”. I had to ask what the Plastics team meant, thinking it was an acronym for something complicated, but Plastics team is just short for Plastic Surgery team who also specialize in the nerve endings in the face. Her right leg is starting to move more, and she is able to cross her legs which means her right hip area is strong enough to do that motion. Lastly, today we recorded our CBC Canada interview which is scheduled to air tomorrow, October 17.

As Day Eleven ends, I wish I didn’t have to write this but her update today is not good. There was some new information I found out about Jenny that involves her future. I go through it on my second post of Jenny’s Journal. I just finished writing that entry, but it is currently 3:39am local time and I cannot find the energy right now to condense the events and new information found out today for this daily update. Otherwise, Jenny is set to see the Traumatic Brain Injury team at the end of this October in about two weeks time. Her right hand and arm are not in a good condition, and the Occupational Therapy team will likely be putting it in a splint but the preliminary review is likely in 2-3 days from now as it is rare to have the Occupational Therapy team confirm something in the normal wards on a Monday according the her nurse. As well, Jenny is 100% going to be in the hospital past Christmas and entering the New Year. Her recovery will be a long marathon and not a race.

As Day Ten ends we also enter the two week mark since Jenny’s tragic accident. It has been 14 days since her life changed completely, and so much has happened so very quickly. Today we were interviewed by OmniTV and hope Jenny’s story continues to reach out across the community. Today Jenny was more active and had further purposeful movement in her left arm. Her right arm has not moved since yesterday. She is trying to scratch the areas of surgery, especially her brain surgery area and her stomach surgery area along with trying to pull on her feeding tube. They had to put “Cozy” mitts on her to stop her from continuing. The sutures are being cleaned and maintained with no signs of infection so far. There is one more day of eye drops before the ophthalmologist team revisits her eyes and their condition. Though her left eye is showing progress in movement and tracking, her right eye still remains static and unresponsive. We can only hope for the best following the ophthalmologists review. Lastly, I would like to give a special mention to the front desk staff at HSC Canad Inns including Nick, Jean and Harry for wanting to learn more about Jenny’s story, supporting her and also supporting me during my stay.

As Day Nine ends, Jenny finishes her first 24 hours in the “Step Down” Ward. Her vitals have been stable with no adjustments to her medications. She is currently on a feeding tube, blood thinners, regular tylonel, along with two eye drops per day. She still cannot speak or respond to any instructions. She can only open her left eye periodically – when she does she looks around briefly but she does not recognize anything. She is able to move her left arm and left leg more freely and she is showing signs of movement in her right leg. Her right arm has not moved much at all. Her right eye is still shut and does not respond in any way, even when doing the flashlight test. I am worried that she might have lost her ability to use her right eye completely, but the nurses have said that due to the type of brain damage (diffuse axonal injury) and blood clots between the eye and brain, we must simply wait to see if she can regain any control of her right eye.