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 )