Dee Pickering Bio Page

Dee Pickering Bio Page

Dee Pickering
Email: deep@epix.net
Web Page: http://www.angelfire.com/pa/mistymemories

Norm and I are the caregivers of our son Dusty. He was injured in a car accident on Dec. 20, 1990. He was in the process of picking Norm up from work when a deer ran in front of him. He had just received his drivers permit on his 16th birthday and was only driving for 3 months. We had a front wheel drive car and when he hit the brakes they locked causing him to go into a spin.

Dusty was helli-ported the the Penn State University Hospital in Hershey Pennsylvania. There he went into a 10 hour surgery the first 6 hours were on brain surgery. He had bone embedded into his brain and also had a compression injury. The neuro- surgeon removed the bone from his brain matter and did the best he could to put the brain back into place. A piece of bone was removed from where a babies soft spot is located. This bone was removed to relieve swelling and also was so shatter it couldn't be repaired. The neuro- surgeon place a pressure gage in his brain plus a tub to drain blood. Dusty had all the blood in his body replaced due to hemorage. Dusty also had his upper sinuses removed because they was no way of repairing them.

After the neuro- surgeon came out of the operating room he said that he did all he could but that Dusty would not recover. I asked at this point if they would be bring Dusty out and he had said yes, because he felt that the other operations would be useless. It was 4 hours later before Dusty came out of surgery. The other doctors decided to go ahead with the other surgery because Dusty's blood pressure was still under control and they felt that it was better to get all the surgery done at once.

At this point Dusty was on full life support and we were told to be prepared to make a decision if we would want the life support removed, and if we would want to donate organs. I told them that there was no way that I could make that decision. Dusty's ICP reach 45 and stayed that way for about 12 hours three days after his accident. I can't remember the exact time of this and this is just a guess. At this point we were sure that we would lose him and were preparing ourselves for this event. But my son had other plans. He's a real fighter and it was only his will to live and God's grace that kept him alive.

Dusty was in a non-respondsive coma for a period of about 6-8 weeks, but he became stabilized on the same day that desert storm was started. I'll never forget that night. They had just place Dusty into rehab and my husband a member or the National Guard may have been called to duty there. Talk about overload, but God in his grace took care of us and he never did have to serve.

It took 4 months before Dusty could speak or do anything on his own. Dusty had to re-learn everything from ground up. He also suffered amnesia. He was unable to remember any of his past before TBI, and his memory was like a checkered board. (he new how to swim, but couldn't remember ever swimming before, etc.)

We brought Dusty home in a wheel chair and through much work he is now walking. He is blind in his left eye and has toning in his right arm and a smaller amount of toning in his right leg. His toe drops and turns in when he walks, though he doesn't need a cain. Since he started retalin in June, his toe no longer turns in.

Dusty was able to graduate in his regular high school and now has an IQ of 85 but has a higher IQ in language it's range is 102-105. Prior to his accident his IQ was 100. Dusty biggest problem he has to over come is compulsive behavior. It has improve over the last year, but we still have concerns. His biggests problems right now are the joking, loud voice, touching people when he talks, and all around poor self protection. He had problems with shoplifting and walking off. We haven't seen any shoplifting since Jan and since he started retalin he hasn't walk off. Dusty short term memory is amazing and is also unusually good.

Dusty now has very good control when he gets mad and has worked out his own way of helping himself with it. He was in agitated stage for over 6 months and it has been a long battle with this, but its wonderful to know that he now can manage the anger himself now. I still get nervous when I see him getting mad but this is something I now have to get over. I guess it will just take time and learning to trust again.

Well there isn't much more at this point I can say, but that the Lord has been there for us and has intervened on numerous occasions.

Dee Pickering

Hope lights a candle in the darkest of despairing hearts.

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