Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the O'Donnell Family

2011 was an incredible year for the O'Donnell family. Our new year started with Michele returning home on the 25th of January after a miraculous 1 year battle to survive. Michele did not settle for just surviving though, she has worked very hard to overcome most of her disabilities. Michele is back in the kitchen where she loves to be making meals for her family and friends. She is walking with the limited assistance from her cane. We recently got her a spinning bike for the house so she can work on her leg strength every day. She runs the house with all the kids coming and going and loves being back in charge. Michele's beautiful hair is growing fast and she will soon again have her long hair back. We are working on solving her double vision problems with prism glasses in hopes we can avoid surgery. Michele still battles with nausea and we are working on that as well.

In February we sold our home of 11 years in an effort to get our lives back on track. We then purchased mountain property in March in hopes to build a home to meet Michele's long term needs. After many months of work we started building our new home on October 1st. We are expecting completion by May 1st 2012. We can’t wait!!



June found us traveling back to Cancun with the kids and close friends for some much needed rest. Since Michele had no memory of her last visit to Cancun, she convinced the rest of us that she wanted to go back and hang out at the pool and get some sun. We all had a wonderful vacation.

John now has time to refocus his efforts on work and is in the process of rebuilding what was lost over the last 2 years due to the economy and being out for a year helping Michele recover. Every weekend John is in the mountains working on the new home.

Billy joined the Navy in June. After his 6 weeks of boot camp, Michele, John, JJ and Jordan all went to Chicago to see Billy graduate. We are all so proud of him. Billy got 10 days leave in July and all he wanted to do was spend time with his family up in the mountains at our property. The 1st day back he asked Jordan for her hand in marriage. Billy and Jordan will have their ceremony on July 28th 2012. Billy left this week from California on the USS Abraham Lincoln on a world tour. He should return to Virginia next June just in time for his wedding. The whole family spent Thanksgiving in LA since Billy did not have time off. We had so much to be thankful for this year and we had a wonderful time celebrating both Thanksgiving and Christmas as a family once again.





There is a "BABY" on the way. Tana is expecting our 1st grandchild this June and we are very happy and excited. Tana will finish high school this month and start working for her Father and try to fill her Mothers old position with the company. She will take a year off from school but will return to college in 2013.



Alyssa started high school this year and has been busy socializing with her new school friends. She keeps telling dad she needs all the time she can get with her friends before we move to the mountains and a new school district next year. It will be tough for her but she is a resilient young lady and we have no doubt she will find many more friends at her new school.



JJ is in heaven going to the mountains every weekend with Dad. He cannot wait to move and already has friends near our new home. He is Dads right hand man and is quickly learning how to build and is picking up the trade very quickly. John looks pretty good with a cowboy hat and boots and fits right into mountain life. John has also become a very good pool player and has even won 4 games this year against his Father, an accomplishment his brother did not make until he was 18 years old.



We hope you all have a safe and wonderful holiday.
Love,
The O'Donnell Family

Pinnacle Leasing
7584 WEST 66TH AVE SUITE 300
Arvada, Colorado 80028

'Miracle' Michele O'Donnell ready for next chapter in life

'Miracle' Michele O'Donnell ready for next chapter in life

Erie mom makes remarkable strides two years after devastating brain injury
By John Aguilar, Camera Staff Writer
Posted: 12/24/2011 02:00:00 PM MST

ERIE -- Michele O'Donnell is on a steady climb out of a dark place -- a place of dashed memories and jumbled months, a place of lost words and tangled emotions.

Or as the 43-year-old mother of four puts it, she's back from a time when she slept. A lot.

"I don't sleep all day -- I can't. I don't want to," Michele said, sitting on the couch of her brother-in-law's home in Erie on a recent morning. "I'm doing a lot now."

A lot includes cooking meals at home, texting her children, leaving simple love notes for her husband, walking longer distances without her cane and perhaps soon getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time in nearly two years.

"I think I'm great," she said, exuding confidence with a wide smile.

Great is a relative term for someone who has been through what Michele has been through. Silent months spent in intensive care units, agonizing days when death was just a failed breath away, grueling months devoted to rehab and the slow, inexorable march from the pain and horror of a cataclysmic brain injury.

"Michele would show signs somehow, some way that she was in there," said her husband of 20 years, John O'Donnell. "We looked at what type of person she was and we never gave up."

Now Michele is ready to move on with the next chapter in her life.

She no longer lives in the Superior home she spent so many years in. Lost work and staggering medical bills -- the family has had to spend more than $100,000 out of pocket -- forced her husband to sell it and move in with family in Erie.

But John is building the family a new handicap-accessible house in Park County, which he hopes will be completed in the spring.

"We have a lot to be thankful for," he said. "If you had seen her every day, you'd definitely think it was a miracle. We honestly didn't think she'd make it. It has made us stronger."

'She's a fighter'

Jan. 27, 2010, won't be a day the O'Donnell family will soon forget. It was the day Michele slipped on a wet bathroom floor at her family's vacation timeshare in Cancun, Mexico, and struck the back of her head on the floor.

She underwent nearly six hours of surgery that evening to relieve pressure on her brain. She slipped in and out of consciousness and breathed on a respirator. And that was just the beginning.

Michele spent week after week, then month after month, at a dizzying series of hospitals from Cancun to Miami to Denver, lying listless and largely unresponsive as doctors and specialists tried to reconnect her with basic life functions. She had to be resuscitated on an emergency basis twice when she stopped breathing.

"Looking back at the pictures from then, it's amazing how far she's come," said her 15-year-old daughter, Alyssa. "It proves her power and strength and how miracles can work every day."

As she continued to show signs of improvement, the family dubbed her Miracle Michele and began preparing for a homecoming like no other. Balloons flew and friends gathered in January as Michele said goodbye to Boulder Community Hospital and hello to life back at home.

Now she cooks chicken, pasta and rice for her family, supplementing her work in the kitchen with down time watching "The Rachael Ray Show," "The Price is Right" and "Let's Make a Deal."

"I'd come home to four things in the fridge with my name on them," said Tana, her 17-year-old daughter. "It's a big change. It's nice to come home and see what she made today."

In June, the family returned to the same timeshare in Cancun where Michele had sustained her injury. She walked in the pool and tried her best to strengthen muscles that had atrophied over a year of being bedridden.

"It was her decision to go there," John said.

Over Thanksgiving, the family went to Los Angeles to see off eldest son, Billy, as he deployed on an aircraft carrier with the Navy.

Recovery for Michele hasn't come to an end. She still has special lenses on her glasses to keep her double vision in check and she doesn't go far without her cane. Her speech is simple and her sentences clipped, but she can express what she wants.

Dr. Alan Villavicencio, a neurosurgeon with Boulder Community Hospital who has tracked Michele's progress, said Michele has surprised everyone in how well she has done.

"She's a fighter, for sure," Villavicencio said. "She's given it her all, all the way. Because of her personality and drive, she has excelled better than we expected."

But the doctor said Michele's recovery will probably plateau in a year or two and she could face challenges later in life, such as muscle rigidity.

"Some of it is a permanent injury," he said.

Family is everything

Michele isn't worried about what could happen down the road. She likes where she is now and wants to keep taking small steps forward. Doctor visits are few and far between and the waves of nausea that used to plague her on a daily basis are largely gone.

"It doesn't hurt," she said. "So it's good for me."

For Michele, family comes before everything, and in that arena, she is richly blessed. Not only do her two daughters and youngest son live with her, but a grandchild will soon be in the mix, too.

"My kids are here -- John -- that's what I want," she said.

John said he relied on his Catholic faith to get through the darkest moments of the last two years and celebrate the most joyous ones. He is endlessly grateful to all the medical staff who brought his wife back from the brink so many times and to all those who helped his family in countless ways as he struggled financially and emotionally.

And he cherishes every extra day that he gets to be with Michele.

"If it came down to losing my wife, I would be thankful for all the days that I had with her," he said.

Contact Camera Staff Writer John Aguilar at 303-473-1389 or aguilarj@dailycamera.com.




Michele O'Donnell is about to get a kiss from her son, Billy, in the family s former Superior home last January. ( CLIFF GRASSMICK )


Michele O'Donnell, right, gets a kiss from her daughter, Alyssa, while her son, John, and sister Amy McAlister, left, sit with her in December 2010, shortly after she was moved to Boulder Community Hospital to continue her rehabilitation. ( MARTY CAIVANO )

'Miracle Michele' has much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving

'Miracle Michele' has much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving

By Kimberli Turner Colorado Hometown Weekly
Posted: 11/22/2011 03:59:43 PM MST

One of the most poignant memories to return to Michele O'Donnell in the last 60 days is from her month-long stay in a hospital in Mexico nearly two years ago. She recalled lying in her hospital bed one day, waking to find her son Billy O'Donnell by her side. "Billy was rubbing my leg and rubbing my back and he was with me," she said Monday, Nov. 21. Another memory that has also surfaced was the image of her daughter, Alyssa, crying when Michele stopped breathing once in the same hospital. The two memories bring Michele to tears but, for the most part, she's been recalling only the good times from before her January 2010 accident.

Michele slipped and fell in the bathroom of her family's Cancun timeshare and she hit her head, causing a brain hemorrhage. She was in a drug-induced coma for a week during her hospital stay in Mexico and was moved to a Florida hospital where she suffered a second brain hemorrhage.

Michele was moved to Colorado in April 2010 and was in a comatose state for 45 days before doctors at Denver's Kindred Hospital adjusted a shunt that controlled the drainage in her head.

Last year at this time, Michele, who was in Boulder Manor recovering from her head trauma and receiving physical therapy, started with baby steps by coming home for Thanksgiving and a sleep-over at Christmas. This Thanksgiving, Michele, dubbed 'Miracle Michele' by her husband, John, said she has much to be thankful for. "I have John. I'm going to cry," she said Monday night at her brother-in-law's Erie home. "I love him so much, 25 years we've been married. "And then I have my babies," she added, looking at three of her children, Tana, 17, Alyssa, 15, and John John, 9, seated on the couch next to her.

Her son Billy is stationed in Los Angeles with the United States Navy and is preparing to embark on a six-month worldwide tour in December.

Michele and John sold their Superior home within two days of Michele's January homecoming and moved into her brother-in-law's home in February. The O'Donnells are having a house built in Park County which they hope they can move into by May 1.

Since January, Michele has been working on walking around the house on her own and getting back to her daily routine.

She no longer uses her wheelchair or walker and, in the last couple of months, Michele has gone from using a cane with a four-pronged base to a regular walking cane. "John said to me, 'You're done with that, walk with this,'" Michele said of her cane. "I kind of forced it upon her and I said, 'Isn't it time?'" John recalled.

But Michele was ready for the next step in her rehabilitation and she said she tries to walk around the house cane-free most of the day.

Her goal is to walk completely on her own by New Year's Eve and John hopes to buy an elliptical machine for his wife once they move into the new house. Michele has also returned to doing the laundry and other housework and she cooks for her family every day. In a means to hone her speaking skills and help her put sentences together, Michele also texts and emails friends and family daily. The memories of Michele's life are slowly coming back to her, and John said because Michele knew her family's names and faces early on, he didn't initially realize how much of her long-term memory was missing.

She now recalls her wedding day, family trips and events with friends among many other things. "I think it's ridiculous how much she's overcome," Tana said of her mom's progression. "We come home and she's busy in the kitchen and I remember when she was laying in the hospital bed. I can't wait for next year to see how she's improved."

Though Michele still has a ways to go in her recovery, John said he's thankful for every improvement she makes. "It's a lot better than the alternative a year ago," he said. We'll take on anything now. We've already been through the tough stuff."

UPDATE 2/2/2011

On the move again
Superior mother returns home one year after accident caused brain hemorrhage

By Kimberli Turner

Colorado Hometown Weekly

When Billy O’Donnell was told to bring home one fireworks fountain for his mom’s homecoming celebration, he brought home four.
And it wasn’t just Billy, 18, who was excited about the return of his mother, Michele O’Donnell — a crowd of friends, family and Superior community members waited in the O’Donnells’ Rock Creek driveway on Friday, Jan. 29, to give her the welcome she deserved after being away for just over a year.

On Jan. 27, 2010, Michele slipped and fell in the bathroom of the family’s Cancun timeshare, which caused a brain hemorrhage that required an immediate operation.
She was in a drug-induced coma for a week of her monthlong stay in a hospital in Mexico, before moving to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Florida, where she suffered a second brain hemorrhage. Following a two-month stint there, Michele came back to Colorado and went into a comatose state for 45 days at Denver-based Kindred Hospital before traveling to other rehabilitation facilities for treatment and physical therapy.

Michele’s husband, John O’Donnell, and their children Billy, Alyssa, 14, Tana, 16, and John John, 8, nearly lost her eight times. But each time, they said she fought to recover, and John could finally do what he had wanted to accomplish for a year.
“I brought my girl home,” he told a friend at the celebration.

Following a lunch in Boulder, John drove Michele up to their home on Alma Lane, where more than 50 people were waiting to release purple and white balloons.
When Michele got out of the car, she took step after step with a walker to greet the crowd and, in the background, the first strains of singer Katy Perry’s “Firework” began to play.
Then Billy got to set off his fireworks display, alerting the community that his mother was finally home.
“It means everything. I’ve been waiting for her to come home,” he said Saturday. “It’s incredible.”

Michele’s sisters, Cindy Skerjanec of Brighton and Amy McAlister of Longmont, were also there to welcome Michele.
Amy said the sisters cried a lot in the months following Michele’s accident, but now they laugh a lot, knowing the worst is over.
McAlister and her nieces and nephews flew down to Jackson Memorial last Easter because they thought they were going to have to say goodbye to Michele. But Michele, who had last rites read to her several times, had other plans.
“I said, ‘No way,’” she said.
And through the ups and downs of her recovery, the ups finally became more frequent, especially during Michele’s time at Boulder Manor, McAlister said.
“There was definitely a feeling when I thought the floor wasn’t going to drop out from under us,” she said.
McAlister and Skerjanec said they finally started to feel optimistic about Michele’s recovery when she got to Boulder Manor this past fall, and they believe music therapy really helped in Michele’s healing.

Michele’s best friend, Karen Long of Florida, agreed.
“She loves her music. From the beginning John had her iPod in her room,” she said. “Even in intensive care we played it all night long.”
While Michele was having difficulty relearning how to talk, she had no difficulty in singing along to the music, Long said. And, eventually, the words came, too.

Following her stay at Boulder Manor, Michele moved to the Mapleton Center in December, where she learned to eat a meal and walk down a hallway and up and down the stairs.
And now, with some help, Michele practices walking up and down the 14 stairs in her home.
“The (first) time I did it by myself, I almost fell,” she said. “I went all the way up and all the way down. It’s weird, but I do it.”
Because of the mounting medical bills, John was forced to put their home up for sale.

The O’Donnells plan to stay in Superior for another year or two, and then John hopes to build a new home on a piece of land outside of Fairplay.
John said the house doesn’t matter, though, and the family got back what was most important to them:

“It’s truly a miracle she’s here.”

UPDATE 1/28/2011

Michele O'Donnell, mother of 4, returns to Superior home after a year in hospitals






SUPERIOR -- A cruel irony will be at play at Michele O'Donnell's homecoming this weekend.

There will be balloons, fireworks and hundreds of friends, neighbors and well-wishers at her Alma Lane home in Superior on Saturday to welcome her back from a year of hospitals, rehab centers and five surgeries on her brain.

But the home where Michele has lived with her family for 11 years won't be hers for long.

The travails of having to keep the 42-year-old mother of four alive after she slipped and smashed her head in Mexico one year ago have resulted in months of missed work for her husband and piles of medical bills that have whittled away the family's savings.

Mortgage payments were missed, the house briefly fell into foreclosure last month, and now the place must be sold.

John O'Donnell, Michele's husband of 20 years, said the family will "downsize," rent a place nearby and work toward their long-term goal -- buying some property in Park County and building a modest home there.

"We'll live well below our means for the next couple of years until I can save up some money," John said. "I can rebuild, and I will. The two things I have to do most is take care of her and get back to work."

The stress of the O'Donnells' ordeal over the last 12 months was evident earlier this week. Tears welled in John's eyes as he stood on the upstairs landing of his Rock Creek house, where two showings were scheduled for later that day.

His recent handiwork -- a handicap-accessible shower and toilet stall that he constructed to make it possible for Michele to use the bathroom -- denoted a more auspicious time.

"When I had to pack up the very first box, I couldn't," said John, who owns an equipment financing business in Arvada.

But he refuses to let the accident pull him down.

Despite the troubles that have befallen his family since his wife slipped and struck her head on a wet bathroom floor at their vacation timeshare in Cancun on Jan. 27, 2010, John takes pleasure in the progress of Michele's recovery from near death.

"The good news is we got her, and all the rest doesn't matter," he said. "I got my girl back."

Michele, who left the Mapleton Rehabilitation Center in Boulder a week ago after a six-week stay, has gone from someone who was unresponsive and hooked up to an endless tangle of feeding and oxygen tubes to someone who smiles, laughs, jokes and teases her kids and husband.

"No way, dude," she said to John on Thursday, when he mentioned the impending move out of their home.

Like any mother might, she challenged her eldest son's plans to join the Navy, saying "maybe" when he talked about heading to boot camp.

"I remember the way she was on day one and halfway through it, and I'm so proud of her," said Billy O'Donnell, 18, who has regularly visited his mother at the seven hospitals and rehab facilities she has called home for a year. "It's a good feeling seeing her every day and night."

In the short time that has passed since the Camera profiled her story in late December, Michele has made remarkable strides forward.

She walks hundreds of feet at a time with a walker, converses in short sentences and phrases, and motions to her family members animatedly. She has lost the eye patch that served to counter her double vision, and her hair is slowly growing back to the shoulder length she desires.

Michele dresses herself, brushes her own hair and teeth and can make it up the stairs in her home with the help of a cane. Her cocktail of 15 medications has been reduced to just three.

"I do it all myself," Michele said, beaming from a chair in her family room. "Do it all -- I have to."

Her husband hopes she'll be able to return to her true passion -- cooking -- as soon as possible. She's already telling him where in the local Safeway he can find the ingredients for dinner, he said.

Amy McAlister marvels at the progress her sister makes each day.

"She says things she couldn't remember yesterday," said McAlister, before being overwhelmed by emotion and a stream of tears. "So many times along the way we thought, 'This is it.'"

Whether Michele truly recognizes that she will soon be leaving the home that she has always taken great pride in running isn't entirely clear. But she knows exactly -- without hesitation -- what she likes best about being back home.

"Him and my kids," Michele said, pointing to her husband and son. "That's what I want."

MIRACLE MICHELE IS COMING HOME!

MIRACLE MICHELE’S HOMECOMING!

An entire year has passed and Michele is finally coming home! She has endured multiple surgeries, drug induced comas, numerous infections, and intense physical therapy to bring her body and mind back to a condition that she is finally able to go home to her husband and children.

PLEASE JOIN US TO WELCOME MIRACLE MICHELE HOME
Saturday, January 29, 2011 - 1:00 p.m.
1856 Alma Lane, Superior CO 80027

A GRAND CELEBRATION WITH BALLOONS, FIREWORKS, FAMILY, FRIENDS & THOSE WHO HAVE SUPPORTED AND PRAYED FOR MICHELE AND HER FAMILY THIS YEAR

UPDATE 1/8/2011

Hi Everyone,
I got a call this morning from Michele and she asked me if I was coming for lunch today and I said yes. She said that she was going to walk up 18 stairs with her therapist, Bill and they were going to do it at 11:30 so I should come early. I got there right as they were ready to get started.
She kept saying "I can't" and "I'm freakin' out", but off we went. She got herself up from a lying position in bed and stood up all by herself and grabbed on to the walker. Off she went out the door, past the nurses station and sat down for a minute before she was off to the stairs.
Oh boy, when she saw the first set of 9 stairs, she started in with the "I can't" again, but Bill has a way with her and she started to climb, holding on to the railing with her right hand, which is her weakest. When she got to the landing she really said "I can't" but kept going. Bill had a chair at the top of second set so that she could rest before they headed back down again. She said "How am I going to get back down?". You know what Bill's answer was.
So she stood up and complained all the way down, but she did it. She grabbed on to her walker at the bottom of the stairs and walked back to the chair in the hall for a break. Then when she was ready, she walked back to her room. Instead of getting back in bed, Bill told her to sit in the wheelchair to eat her lunch with me. She complained about it, but she did and we had a nice lunch together.
She got back into bed for a little bit, but she was off to speech therapy at 12:45.

Sue