'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 )