First off, I wanted to thank you guys so much for your support. I've had a bunch of calls and e-mails, and it has definitely helped. Please continue to keep her in your prayers.
At this point, here's where the situation stands, and what we know thus far:
Meghan is a senior in high school in Monument, Colorado. Thursday afternoon, Meghan found out that she made callbacks for the school musical. Friday morning, her friends decorated her late-60s Volkswagen Beetle and filled it with balloons to congratulate her. She had taken it to the car wash to remove the shoe polish, but she left the balloons in the car.
She stopped by the house to talk to my mom for a few minutes, and then left to go somewhere... I'm not quite sure where she was headed. They live in a large wooded area, and each lot is a couple acres, so the houses aren't exactly close together. She got approximately 5 houses down before she ran off the road into a pole. There were no skid marks at the scene. We don't know yet if the balloons got in the way, or something else happened.
The car didn't have seatbelts. She struck the pole on the passenger side. Thank God no one was with her, cause they would have been killed for sure. She slammed her head into the ceiling, and her chest into the steering wheel. It punctured her chest 3 or 4 times, and went into her lungs. She broke her jaw in 4 places, and inhaled a molar, which embedded itself in her lungs. She broker her nose too, and several other bones in her face.
That's not the worst of her head trauma though. As I mentioned before, she broke the C2 vertebrae in her neck. Thankfully, it's called a "hanging break". It's completely broken, but the bone didn't slip into the spinal cord, so miraculously, she's not going to be paralyzed.
She was found by the Schwann Ice Cream guy almost immediately after it happened. Her head was bent so far backward, that she could not breathe. The Schwann guy tilted her head forward just enough for her to start breathing and coughing up blood. That saved her life. It's completely amazing that he didn't paralyze her in the process. They got her in the ambulance within 15 minutes of the accident, and she was able to hang on long enough to get to the hospital in Colorado Springs.
Since she's not paralyzed, she's been able to move her arms and legs around a bit. When she's awake, she's been able to talk in Sign Language to the doctors. She took it as her foreign language credit in high school, and it has really come in handy. She's able to answer yes or no questions, and she's been finger-spelling for a couple of nurses that kind of understand the letters. I was really wanting to talk to her before I got here to LA, and by luck, I called the nurse's station while they were in her room. I got to talk to her, and she got really excited and made the sign for "I love you", which made my weekend.
She goes to St. Francis Catholic Church in Denver, and she ended up in St. Francis Catholic Hospital, so there's no doubt in our minds that God's been taking care of her. The hospital staff is amazing, and have been extremely professional. They're keeping her cleaned up and as comfortable as they can, given the circumstances.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. They put her into a halo. It's much better than the alternative. My mom say's it's hard to look at sometimes. There are complications right now... they say she's bleeding internally. I know she's gonna be alright, but it's really hard without being there. I'm sitting in the press room right now, getting ready to write the overview that I can't publish until tomorrow, and I'm really not into it. Hopefully the demos tomorrow will be awesome enough to keep my mind off the mess.
This is the last time I'll post on here about personal stuff. I promise it's Vista only from here on out. Thanks for all your calls and e-mails of support, and please keep her in your prayers.