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Prayers help woman recover from
severe accident
Tuesday, May 9, 2000
By JUNO OGLE
Hays Daily News
PLAINVILLE - Scientific research has shown that
prayer can help the sick and injured recover more
quickly. Susie Burton is living proof.
Just more than
a year ago and halfway around the world, doctors did not
expect Burton to survive more than 12 hours after an
accident that caused severe injuries and put her in a
three-week coma.
Although today she has constant
pain, walks with a limp and suffers memory lapses,
doctors say Burton's recovery is difficult to explain.
Burton and her family say her life today is a direct
result of the prayers and well-wishes - conventional and
electronic - sent her way during her
recovery.
Burton, then 39, had gone to Australia to
visit friends and while there, interviewed for a job as
a customer service technician for Compaq Computer Corp.
After a short interview at the Sydney airport, she was
offered a job on the spot.
She flew home to
Plainville, got her affairs in order and immediately
returned to Sydney to start her new job. The job and the
country agreed with her, Burton said.
"It was almost
perfect. Over there they all say 'no worries.' That's
how they take things. It's real laid back and they don't
get stressed out like they do over here," she
said.
Always mechanical-minded, the work came easily
to Burton even though she had never worked with
computers until her mother bought one for her two years
before.
She quickly learned how it worked and got a
job at Sykes Enterprises Inc. in Hays and advanced
through its ranks. Then came the opportunity for
Australia.
For Burton, who had always done physical
labor, those jobs were a source of pride.
"It was the
first time I'd ever done anything important. It was a
career. I was real proud," she said.
Then one day in
April 1999 it was taken away.
Burton was walking
across a six-lane street in Sydney to meet a friend at a
bar. She doesn't remember the accident, but Burton
thinks that as she saw the BMW closing in on her at
about 50 mph, she instinctively raised her right arm,
saving her face from the scars that now mark her
forearm.
The BMW's hood ornament caught her just
above the right hip, tearing open a long, deep cut
across her back. Her head shattered the windshield. Her
right leg and every rib on her right side was broken,
her lungs collapsed and her liver and spleen were
smashed.
Burton's mother, Bebe, was contacted in
Plainville, and she her son Jack left for Australia the
next morning.
When they arrived in Sydney, Burton was
in a drug-induced coma. A respirator breathed for her,
and a tube drained fluid from her lungs. A hole had been
drilled in her head to relieve the pressure. Doctors
weren't sure of the extent of her brain injury and how
many skills she might have lost.
She was kept in the
coma for three weeks. Burton said she has memories of
that time.
"It was like I was dreaming. I can
remember the dream, and it correlates with everything
that happened outside of me during that coma," she
said.
She can remember friends from a Sydney
motorcycle club in her room, talking about the right
side of her body being paralyzed and taking her on a
motorcycle trip after she recovered.
And then there
were the e-mail messages, more than 200 in all, from
every state in the United States and from Australia,
France and Germany.
When one of her friends in
Sydney heard about the accident, she went to Burton's
apartment and e-mailed everyone in Burton's address book
with the information. They responded, writing their
messages to Burton herself, telling her they and even
their church congregations were praying for her
recovery.
Her friend printed the messages and would
read them to Burton while she was in the coma. As she
did, Burton's left index finger would move - as if she
were clicking the button on her computer's mouse, her
friend told her.
"She said if there's anyone who
could tap into the Internet from beyond it would be
Susie," Burton said.
When she awoke from the coma,
Burton recognized her mother, and even though she
couldn't speak due to a tracheotomy, she was able to
communicate. However, she had to relearn some skills,
such as how to swallow liquids.
Doctors said it would
be seven months before she would be well enough to leave
Australia, followed by three months of physical
therapy.
But after only six weeks, she returned to
Kansas and spent less than three months at the Hadley
campus of Hays Medical Center.
Burton credits those
electronic wishes, as well as the prayers of those back
home in Plainville, with her quick recovery.
"I get
a lump in my throat every time I think about it. I could
have very easily just rolled over and given up," she
said.
Although constant headaches and poor vision
keep her from the job she loved, she spends most of her
time on her computer in her bedroom, answering e-mails
for technical help through a Web site, working on her
own Web site or those of friends and keeping in touch
with her Internet friends who sent their prayers.
She
hopes to go back to Australia for a visit to thank the
hospital staff and maybe take a ride with her motorcycle
friends.
But for now, she's just happy to be alive
and to be able to enjoy it.
"The whole thing has just
been life altering. Air smells cleaner. The sun's
brighter. The birds sound better. It's just cooler. You
don't appreciate what you've got until it's gone," she
said. |
