THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 4, 1995 TAG: 9511040285
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBRA GORDON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH LENGTH: Long : 182 lines
Think about the simple tasks of your day:
Brushing your teeth. Tying your shoes. Hanging up your clothes.
Now imagine your frustration if you found you couldn't squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube. Couldn't cross the laces to form a loop. Couldn't slip a vest onto a hanger.
Now you understand a bit about Corinthia Morrison's world the past month as she recovered at Manning Convalescent Home from a coma that had lasted two months.
Corinthia, of Lynchburg, lapsed into the coma after her son was delivered by Caesarian section in early August. She was 16.
Parts of her brain died from lack of oxygen. Most patients with her kind of injury have a grim prognosis, and Corinthia was no exception. Even when she emerged from her coma, early predictions were that she ``might'' gain some independence. Perhaps, one therapist remembers thinking, she would be able to know what time it was or where she was.
But Friday, Corinthia went home, just a month after she stirred out of her coma.
She's by no means fully recovered. Her memory is still fuzzy. Writing is difficult. She needs verbal reminders to complete some of those routine tasks of daily life, like brushing teeth and picking up her room. And she can't tie her shoes.
But she can hold her 3-month-old son, Christian. She can hug her 12-year-old sister. And she can walk out of Manning where, a month ago, she arrived on a stretcher, a feeding tube in her nose.
In time, doctors believe, she will be able to do most of what she could before the coma.
Even to those who are used to treating brain-injured patients like Corinthia, the girl's quick recovery is nothing short of miraculous. Her age played a big part - but it doesn't explain everything.
``It's been very dramatic to watch her,'' says her doctor, Bonnie Nock. ``It's very satisfying, because we don't see this very often.''
By all accounts, Corinthia's pregnancy was normal, remembers her mother, Twila Burden. Corinthia was overdue when she went into labor. But the labor didn't progress, and after more than 24 hours, doctors performed a Caesarian under general anesthesia, putting Corinthia on a ventilator to help her breath.
After the operation - and for reasons her doctors still don't understand - Corinthia's lungs collapsed, shutting off the oxygen to her brain.
This all occurred on Aug. 2 in Lynchburg, where Corinthia was an honor roll student in the 11th grade.
She was just beginning to emerge from the coma when she was transferred to Manning on Oct. 2 - her 17th birthday. Skyline Rehabilitation Management runs a special unit there for people with head injuries.
When Nock first examined Corinthia, her initial impression, she says, was that the teenager was ``out to lunch.''
Corinthia couldn't follow commands. She hit people. Kicked at them. She couldn't talk, couldn't walk and couldn't use the bathroom.
She had no sense of self, no sense of what things were or where she was. If she saw a hand or face, or even a spoon, coming towards her, she reacted with fear and agitation, striking out, turning away.
The prognosis was that she would be at Manning through Christmas, maybe longer. And she would leave barely able to communicate - her muscles atrophied, arms and legs bent and twisted.
But Corinthia proved all the professionals wrong.
It's four days before Corinthia is to be discharged, and speech pathologist Denise Wheeler begins a therapy session: ``I want you to tell me three colors.''
``Red, purple, red,'' Corinthia answers.
``Well, you told me red. I need a different color.''
``Orange.''
Corinthia has had speech therapy five days a week since she arrived. She's progressed from learning how to eat - which the speech therapist teaches - to today's language therapy, in which she works on comprehension.
``Let's try your alphabet,'' Wheeler says.
``A, B, C, D, E, F, G, I . . . ''
``Wait a minute. That was wrong.''
``A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, I, K . . . ''
It's called perseverating - when your mind can't make the transition to the next item or task. It's what makes Corinthia repeat letters or numbers.
It's just one of the problems Corinthia still struggles with since her injury. The goal of her rehabilitation is to teach her brain to use new pathways to process information, bypassing the dead cells.
But she still needs assistance with her daily activities, as evidenced during her occupational therapy session with therapy assistant Michelle Fitzpatrick three days before she was to be discharged.
It is Fitzpatrick's job to prepare Corinthia to return to the real world. She's had to teach her everything - from how to brush her teeth to how to take a shower. How to keep her room neat. How to speak properly. When it is appropriate to give one of the hugs that Corinthia dispenses so freely.
``I want you to gather together all the things you need to take a shower,'' Fitzpatrick says.
``Um . . . soap, powder, toothbrush, toothpaste,'' Corinthia picks each item off the table and lays it on the bed. ``Deodorant. Clothes.''
She takes a pale lemon sweat suit from the closet and Fitzpatrick peeks in.
``One quick question,'' Fitzpatrick says. ``What's on the floor of your closet?''
``Shorts.''
``Are they clean or dirty? Should they be in the dresser or hung up?''
Corinthia goes to put them away in the drawer but Fitzpatrick stops her. ``Wait, they need to be folded nicely.''
Before her injury, Corinthia was a very neat teenager, says her mother. And very particular about her personal hygiene. So it was a shock for Burden to see her daughter with unbrushed teeth and matted hair even late in her therapy.
Fitzpatrick counsels patience. Look how far Corinthia has come, she says.
``I think it was just a week ago you were sitting there saying, `I don't know what I need,' '' Fitzpatrick reminds her patient. ``Isn't this great?''
Then she gets to the part Corinthia hates. Tying her shoes.
Step one. Cross laces.
This Corinthia can do.
Step two. Put one cross under the other cross.
And here Corinthia is lost. She moves her hands and the laces uncross. Then she drops one.
``It's not going anywhere,'' she says, frustrated.
Michelle takes up the laces and, with Corinthia reciting each step from memory, ties the shoes.
Corinthia may never learn to tie her shoes. And that's OK, says Fitzpatrick. She can wear slip-on shoes, or ones that close with Velcro.
That's an important part of rehab, Fitzpatrick reminds her patient: learning new ways, or new techniques, to accomplish old tasks.
Three days before her homecoming, Corinthia breaks into a wide grin when she's asked how she feels about going home. But she's nervous, she says, because her family moved from Harrisonburg to Lynchburg while she was in the hospital. She has to start at a new school. Make new friends. She won't have her old job at a Wendy's restaurant.
Then ask her mother about these things. And you learn that the family had moved long before Corinthia's accident. That she worked a month at a Rally's Hamburgers. That her father - who Corinthia said lives with the family - is divorced from Burden.
``She's confused,'' her mother says. ``She's seen this house. She just doesn't remember.''
Corinthia didn't remember she had a baby when she first came out of the coma. It was just a week ago that she first held Christian, whose father has moved away and is not involved in his care. Ask her how to spell the baby's name and she has to hand you his birth announcement. She doesn't remember.
Still, her memory is much better than when she first came to Manning, Nock says. Then, when you walked out of the room, Corinthia would immediately forget who you were.
Now, the cheerful teenager wanders the nursing home, calling out greetings to dozens of staff, gathering hugs from the women employees she calls her ``other mothers.''
This could be a problem when she leaves Manning, Nock worries.
``She hasn't learned yet who is a good and bad guy, and who you can talk to and touch and who you should stay away from,'' Nock explains.
It's a problem Burden will have to deal with - how to encourage Corinthia to behave like a normal teenager, with friends and dates and parties, and still ensure her safety while she is operating with impaired judgment.
But Friday, when Burden rented a car for the last time to make the four-hour trek to Portsmouth, those concerns were nowhere in evidence.
Instead, a huge smile wreathed her face as she watched her daughter grab Christian's car seat and show off the baby. And that same smile was still evident in Corinthia's room, where her daughter tried to change her first diaper.
But as soon as she removed the diaper, Christian squirted a stream of urine at her.
``He's still peeing,'' Corinthia shrieked, jumping back. ``You do it, Momma, I'll watch you do it.''
And Burden did, gently changing her grandson's diaper, with her daughter - who she thought would never come so far - beside her. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by BILL TIERNAN, The Virginian-Pilot
Corinthia Morrison, 17, has made a miraculous discovery from a coma
she suffered on Aug. 2 after childbirth.
Corinthia Morrison, left, works with speech pathologist Denise
Wheeler at Manning Convalescent Center in Portsmouth. The teen has
had to learn many basic functions, including speech, all over
again.
Photo by BILL TIERNAN, The Virginian-Pilot
Twila Burden sits with her daughter, Corinthia Morrison, and
grandson, Christian, at Manning Convalescent Home in Portsmouth just
before Corinthia left the facility Friday. It took months of therapy
for Corinthia to recover enough from her coma to hold her baby, who
was born Aug. 2.
KEYWORDS: COMA TEENAGE PREGNANCY by CNB