Mar 24, 2008 - 04:05:04 CDT
HAZEN - Brooke Kilber went snowboarding in Montana for spring break and came home Wednesday with a halo drilled into her skull.This is not the kind of halo an angel wears.
The Hazen High School junior is trying hard to be angelic to a stream of visitors, to her little brother Robbie, who can't cuddle close enough, and to her mom, Delree Kilber, who has to cause pain three times a day when she swabs and disinfects where the four screws enter her daughter's forehead and back of the skull.
Those screws, connected to the head brace and stabilized by an attached vest, will help the teen's badly fractured vertebrae properly heal.
She will wear the halo for up to three months. If she is as lucky as she has been so far, the teardrop fracture in her C5 vertebra will not collapse and require surgery.
Luck is in not being paralyzed and in expecting a full recovery, though she'll have scars from the screws that will require plastic surgery at some point and she does have other compression fractures throughout her back that hurt, too.
Delree Kilber holds her fingers a fraction apart to show what the doctor showed her, which is how close her daughter came to an outcome much more catastrophic than the one she was left with.
The Bozeman Deaconess Hospital physician told her he's attached more than 500 halos in his decade of practice near the Rocky Mountains' Big Sky resort not far from Bozeman, Mont., primarily on injured snowboarders. Skiers tend to blow out knees.
He also told her that walking away, like Brooke did, though gingerly and on heavy medications for pain, only happens in less than 10 percent of similar injuries.
She is a lucky girl and she does believe in angels.
One of them was a stranger, who was there right after her fall and held her immobile until the ski patrol paramedics arrived.
Before he walked away, he said, "I hope you get better, girl."
That was shortly after 4 p.m. March 15.
Brooke said she was enjoying the best snowboarding day ever, feeling invincible after clearing a ramp.
"I was so high with adrenaline, I took my board off and hiked back up to do it again," Brooke said, at home in the hospital bed in her bedroom, a room filling with flowers and balloons. "It was my best day of snowboarding and my worst day."
Her friend Noah Kupcho, of Hazen, who also was snowboarding, tried to convince her to head down the mountain rather than up for another run, but she wanted one more exhilarating jump to end the day.
All of sudden she was out of control 10 to 12 feet off the ground. She landed on the curve of her neck and felt cold, shock and no movement in her leg.
Within hours, she'd been take by ambulance to the hospital and before midnight, the physician had attached the halo to her skull.
The family friends who'd taken her to Montana among a carload of young people stayed by her side and made frequent calls to her parents.
Back home, Delree and Robert Kilber packed a few things, slept a few hours and left Hazen around 3 a.m., trying through the dark and into the daylight to do as the doctor told them, which was to mentally prepare for the sight of their daughter in a metal contraption screwed to her head that completely immobilizes her head and neck.
Delree Kilber said the mental preparation helped some. More helpful was hearing the statistics of which her daughter so fortunately fell on the right side.
"It'll be a rough couple of months, but this (immobilizing) could have been the rest of her life," Delree Kilber said.
Brooke said it's unlikely she'll be back in school this year. She won't be wearing her new prom dress, either.
She'll make up school work in the summer if she has to and with family and friends around to keep her company, the time will pass, though painfully, as the screws are gradually tightened over the next several weeks.
"I'll feel beautiful when I get this thing off," she said.
She said she'll snowboard again, but she'll take a pass on the jumps.
Kupcho, who rode with her in the ambulance and waited outside the room for two hours while the halo was surgically put into place, said he learned a lesson, too.
"I'm not going to take any crazy chances," he said.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511, or lauren@westriv.com.)
Brooke wrote on Oct 4, 2008 8:26 PM:
Kourtney wrote on May 24, 2008 7:43 AM:
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