An Easter Story

Crash, tumble, tumble, tumble, thud, moan…I didn’t actually hear the car wreck or see the driver thrown from the SUV…but I did hear my phone ring. It was 2 a.m. on April 5th 2009, and an emergency room nurse from Glendive was calling to tell us that our 17-year-old niece Janelle had fallen asleep on her way home and was found unconscious beside the highway on a frozen stretch of prairie by a couple of truck drivers. Janelle had called her parents at midnight and said she was driving home. When an hour passed and she hadn’t made it to the ranch, her dad went out in search of her. About 15 miles from home, he came upon the accident scene. The truck drivers had covered her with blankets and had called for an ambulance. She was alive…but just barely. In Glendive, the doctors and nurses determined that her injuries, including numerous broken bones, were beyond their level of care. As luck would have it, there was already a plane flying to Glendive from Bismarck. It was originally called for another person injured in a car wreck that same night. However, the family gave up that plane to Janelle as their loved one had been declared brain dead.

So after our phone call, began one of the longest nights of our lives. We didn’t know how soon the plane would be landing in Glendive and taking off with Janelle, so we decided to get up and go to the hospital in Bismarck and wait. And we waited. At about 7 a.m., an ambulance pulled into the hospital’s garage bay and I could see a team of medical professionals run out to take the gurney holding Janelle into the emergency room. Janelle’s mom, Amy, greeted us shortly in the waiting room. Her eyes were red and swollen from the tears she had already cried.

About an hour later, we were called into a small room and briefed by a doctor who told us the extent of her injuries: broken arms, broken legs, broken pelvis and the concussion to her brain. The outlook was pretty bleak.

We kept vigil at the hospital. Later that day, Janelle was moved to ICU. We waited and waited. Periodically, we got further briefings as the results of additional tests were released. Janelle’s dad had gone back to the ranch and loaded up his vehicle with suitcases full of clothes, not knowing how long his daughter would be in the hospital. His cows were calving but his neighbors would take over. Eventually, there would be planting, but his neighbors helped him with that as well. He arrived in Bismarck later in the morning. When he saw me, he came and threw his big arms around me and squeezed me. He finally could show some emotion and he cried. Trying to comfort him, I told him, “Don’t worry…everything would be all right.”

As soon as I said it, I regretted it. How did I know? I’m not a doctor. And the doctors I saw weren’t very optimistic. Later that afternoon, I got into ICU to see Janelle. She was swollen…to the point where it looked like her skin might pop. She was hooked onto several machines that were doing everything for her – breathing, feeding, you name it. She even had a tube connected to the top of her head. The doctors had removed a part of her scalp and her skull because they thought her brain would swell and they wanted to relieve the pressure. My beautiful niece – my god child – lie there motionless with her eyes closed. I had seen people motionless before. They were dead.

A week later was Easter…everyday or every evening for a week we had gone to the hospital. So for Easter, we all agreed to bring some food to the waiting room so we could share a meal together as we continued our vigil. Shortly before noon, the doctors called Janelle’s parents into a small room and gave them horrifying news. If she hadn’t started getting better by then, chances were slim to none that she would recover. With that added grief, we said our prayers and ate dinner…in silence.

Days turned into weeks and the news kept getting grimmer. She had opened her eyes, which we thought was a good sign, until we heard: “The lights are on, but nobody is home.” When a month had nearly passed, she was moved from the hospital in Bismarck to a swing unit in Mandan. More bad news. The doctors said she was just taking up a bed in Bismarck.

And then something happened…about five weeks after her accident. Her brother who was attending college in Montana came to Mandan one weekend and was taunting her, as brothers tend to do to their sisters. The people in the room were shocked when Janelle raised her middle finger as if giving her brother the bird. It might be the first and only time in our lives that we were happy to see such a thing.

Slowly at first, but with every passing day she began to wake up. She had to learn to walk again, to talk again, to use the bathroom again. Then she was moved back to the Bismarck hospital for more intensive therapies as the beginning of her senior year was fast approaching.

She started classes last fall in Glendive taking not only new classes, but also finishing the ones she hadn’t completed her junior year. She still suffered from some short-term memory loss, but doctors at the University of Minnesota told her parents that her memory would recover…just give it some time. And in the mean time, she would have to rely on notes.

Next month she will graduate and next fall she will start college. She’s come a long way in a year. This past weekend, about 30 of us gathered, at her home on the ranch between Glendive and Circle for Easter. It was largely the same 30 who had spent last Easter in the hospital.

This Easter I went up to her dad and threw my arms around him. We didn’t have to say anything. We both had the same thoughts. What a relief to be celebrating Easter on the Scheitlin Ranch.

But I had another nagging thought. Some people have a hard time celebrating Easter or believing the Easter story of how Jesus rose from the grave. But somehow seeing the miracle of Janelle LaRae Scheitlin first hand has strengthened my faith. I can tell you that her doctors didn’t think she was going to make it. The emergency room and acute care doctors are more shocked to see her alive and graduating from high school as an honor roll student than any of us.