"Hurricane" Hannah Knott

I'll be using my blog to update everyone of my niece's condition and recovery from her accident. I just want to start by saying thank you to all of you who have expressed your love and concern for Hannah, Jaxton, Billie and Dave and for our families. It's really quite overwhelming to know of all the people in this community who are willing to help us during this time.

Hannah is a tough little girl with a hard head and we're hoping that will serve her well as her head took most of the impact from hit. She has multiple skull fractures, one that is running down behind her ear, right along the carotid artery. Her orbital is broken as well as her jaw, some ribs, her spine and her pelvis, all on the left side. Oh, and two fingers on her right hand. Surprisingly, the only scrapes are some road rash on her forehead and scratches on her left hand. One of her lungs is also bruised.

The breaks are the least of our concerns though. She has swelling on her brain and her left eye which could cause permanent damage. She is sedated to keep her asleep to let her body heal and get the swelling to go down. The doctors won't give us any forecasts until 72-96 hours after the accident. They expect the swelling to peak in the next couple of days and then start going down, but that could take weeks. She can't open her eyes and isn't responding to commands but does respond to pain. She doesn't like it when they mess with her and kicks her right leg and tries to pull out her IV.

She does have a tube down her throat so they can help her breath. Her organs are all fine, her vitals are good. They help her breath just to make sure she's getting enough oxygen. She's had multiple CT scans which have shown the swelling hasn't increased since Wed afternoon. Her MRI from yesterday showed that they won't need to fuse that skull fracture to protect the carotid artery.

Dave and Billie should be getting a morning update soon. I'll write more later.