Have not seen an update this week but sending more healing vibes for Liz!
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No updates, hope everything still progressing. Come on Liz!
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She is such an amazing competitor. I always enjoy watching her.
I truly hope all is progressing as it should. Not being privy to her medical situation and not wanting to speculate, I just look for the updates her team provides and hope each one is better than the last.
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As the adage goes, no news is good newsā¦ 
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New update today: sheās out of the ICU and moving to inpatient rehab!
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Is anyone comfortable sharing about recovery from a severe TBI? Is this something where all of a sudden people can make a ton of progress? Liz is about 3 weeks post injury with slow steady progress but no mention of her verbally communicating yet. Iām so grateful her team gives updates but Iām wondering what might be expected? Obviously they donāt need to share anything about a prognosis for Liz, but what might a personās recovery be? Is it so completely different for every person that it canāt be predicted?
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I knew somebody who had a TBI many years ago from a horse related incident. As I recall, she was in a coma for at least a couple of weeks, and then gradually came out of it, but was in a rehab facility for quite a long time after that. I want to say at least a few months, maybe longer.
She did make close to a full recovery, although I think she had lingering physical effects that lasted for an extremely long time, and Iām not sure if they ever completely went away.
That was probably at least 20 years ago by now, so I donāt know if the treatment or prognosis would have changed dramatically since then. Plus it probably varies tremendously based on the individual and their exact injury.
It certainly made me think that any movie or TV show that depicts someone suddenly waking up from a coma and standing up and getting out of bed and going about their lives is probably pretty far off base.
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I cannot speak to a TBI as severe as what Liz has experienced, but I can tell you that a friend had a fall on August 14th it didnāt seem that bad, but there was definitely a loud crack when she hit the ground. I donāt think she was unconscious - she immediately moved and wrapped her arms around her head, but it took her a while to get up.
She did get up, and after walking around a while, she opted to get back on her horse (none of us pressured her to do so*) and walked and trotted around a little bit. She said she had a headache, but other than that, she was acting pretty normal. I still was encouraging her to go and get checked out. I was also trying to convince her to get a new helmet.
She did go get checked out and she did have a concussion (and that convinced her to get a new helmet!). We are five weeks later, and she is only just getting back to work (she works for an airline so balance and ability to deal with air pressure changes are a necessity) and I think this coming week will be the first time she is back in lessons.
Very much not as severe as what Liz is dealing with. But considering my friend seemed pretty normal in the immediate aftermath and it has still taken her five weeks to get back to actual normalā¦
TBIs can be brutal. Iām not sure there is any standard timeline. I am glad for all the progress Liz makes, however slow it may be. And am very glad that my friend seems to be mostly recovered now after her much less serious fall and injury.
*I actively hate the old school āget right back on the horseā concept, because sometimes the horse is injured and sometimes the rider is injured. Sometimes both. I have heard so many stories of people getting back on horses with broken bones or getting back on and not remembering any of it. All of which is horrifying. I donāt love that my friend got back on that day, knowing what we know now, but she did walk around with her horse for five or ten minutes to let the adrenaline subside. And not a single one of us in that ring would have judged her negatively if she didnāt get back on that day.
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Iāll be sparing with details to protect privacy, but a good friend of mine had a horse flip on her. She was wearing a helmet but ended up in a coma for a week at least ( I believe medically induced). It took her 1-2 months to start walking and talking again. This was about 10 years ago now, and she probably made a 90% recovery. She is able to walk but does so with a neurologic limp. She can ride and jump, but at a much lower level, and no longer competes. She can hold a conversation just fine, and mentally seems very āwith itā but her speech is slow and slightly slurred. She can recall lots of details from our friendship before the accident, but there is a several month period from before the accident that seems to be lost. I donāt know many details about her exact injury, or whether medicine has progressed enough in the past 10 years where she might face a better recovery if her accident happened today. It seems that TBIs and TBI recoveries are very individual in terms of progress and timeline. Wishing the very best for Liz.
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TBIs can vary so greatly depending on a number of factors-location on the brain, type/angle of impact, any additional trauma to the spinal cord, duration of swelling without intervention, induced or result of injury coma, etc. Swelling and its effect on the body can be impactful for 6-12 months. IMO, it would speculative and unprofessional to predict prognosis with the information thatās been shared publicly.
Laura Collett and WFP have pretty incredible post-TBI stories of you are looking for inspiration! Iām pretty sure Laura discusses her rehab and continued problems from her injury on the Equiratingās Nicole Met Laura podcast.
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From what Iāve learned recently, it seems every TBI is unique and the recovery is a very long journey. I think Jonty Evans put it something like āā¦the lights come on very, very slowly.ā I watched WFP give a talk on his recovery and he said that the healing process continues for years - even 3 years out the brain is still healing and the patient continues to improve. It is still very early days, but it sounds like Liz has exceeded every expectation up to this point, especially considering the severity of the injury. Many patients in the same situation could easily still be in a coma and intubated. I think the fact that she was breathing on her own so soon and is able to move all of her limbs and make purposeful movements at this stage is a really, really good sign.
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This is what happened to a former neighbor. She got knocked out by a young horse and was down and out for several hours before being found. Recovery was really slow and even after two years she still had brain fog at times and would lose her balance without warning. I moved so I donāt know if she ever fully recovered.
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I think Laura Collett is actually blind in one eye, which makes everything she has achieved so much more impressive (I certainly wouldnāt want to run cross country with only one eye! To be fair, I have no desire to do any cross country that I canāt trot, because I am a chicken. So all the props to Laura Collett doing the biggest fences with one eye)
And continued crossed fingers and all the hopes for Liz that that is not something that she needs to consider or ever to deal with. But also, I am sure that if Liz has sight or other disabilities after this fall, she will figure out a way to handle them and succeed.
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Laura Collett is incredible.
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Go Liz!!! Weāre behind you!
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Thank you for sharing the update.
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I understand privacy but is anyone else getting bad pit-of-the-stomach vibes from the lack of updates? They had been very regular with updates and then nothing.
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This could be a ātoo soon to tellā time. Itās hard to give updates when each day is so marginally incremental from yesterday, with some backslide days and some progress days, itās hard to know what to say.
The easier way to measure progress is over weeks and months.
But if it matters, that does say a good deal about the depth of the seriousness of her condition. And recovery.
That said, a year from now we may be celebrating her recovery. But hard to know what that looks like now.
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Me. I am.
I think that Lizās family owes absolutely nothing to us as far as updates, but Iād hoped that there would be good news that they would want to share. Iād hoped to hear that Liz is communicating in some way by now. The pit in my stomach is doing its pit things.
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