Road to recovery continues for CHS student

By Jay Turner

First there was the head-on collision, followed by the emergency skull surgery and then the long, slow recovery with one step forward and two steps back. Then the spring came and there were the benefit concerts and the cards and the well wishers. Summer followed and there was more surgery and further recovery, and daily sessions of speech and physical and occupational therapy.

Alexandra Hildred

Suffice it to say, it’s been a difficult past six months for 16-year-old Alexandra Hildred, the most critically wounded of the six Canton High School students who were hospitalized following a serious car accident on York Street last March.

Hildred, who was riding in the back seat on the passenger side, suffered severe head trauma as well as multiple facial fractures. Doctors ended up having to remove a large portion of her skull, and she spent the next several weeks at Spaulding Rehabilitation Center in Boston, where she slowly regained her speech while relearning other basic functions.

Due to the unpredictable nature of traumatic brain injuries, doctors could not offer much of a long-term prognosis, nor could they predict when she would be ready to resume normal activities. However, she continued to improve, slowly but steadily, and just last month she took a huge leap forward in her recovery when she returned to CHS for the start of a new school year.

“Alexandra’s doing a lot better,” reported her mother, Debbie. “The doctors keep telling her, ‘You don’t believe how lucky you are. You’ve come so far. You’re doing fantastic.’”

Of course, terms like “lucky” and “fantastic” are both highly relative in a case like this, as Alexandra still faces at least one additional surgery and likely several months of OT/PT and speech therapy. She also suffered permanent vision damage, and memory loss remains a “big concern,” according to her mother.

“She doesn’t remember the accident or anything about a week to a couple weeks before it,” said Debbie. “Her short-term memory is also a concern — she’s going to have to rely on a lot of different techniques that she has learned for remembering.”

Yet considering where Alexandra began — and where she was as recently as a few months ago — Debbie has been amazed at the progress that her daughter has shown, and she continues to have high hopes for her as she transitions back to school.

“[Canton High School] is fantastic,” she said. “All the people there are so supportive. They have a lot of resources there that I didn’t realize they had, a lot of the resources that she needs right now.”

Alexandra was apparently convinced all summer that she would be headed back to school and was looking forward to being a normal teenager again; however, the final decision was not made until the week before classes started, after consultation with her doctors and teachers.

“Her teachers were so supportive,” Debbie said. “They came to the hospital, they came to our house. They have really bent over backwards. Another school system would have never done that.”

Debbie could not say enough about the entire school community, in fact, recalling how students and parents came out in large numbers for the two benefit concerts held in Alexandra’s honor, while others in the community stepped up with donations and letters of encouragement.

“That was just unbelievable,” she said. “All of those people who went so far out of their way — some who didn’t even know her — words can’t express how appreciative I was. It really made a huge difference.”

Debbie said the support helped her get through some of her “darkest hours,” which included learning that her oldest son, Ryan, had been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

In fact, Ryan, who is 15 years older than Alexandra and recently married, found out he had the tumor on the day of the accident, although he chose not to tell his mother right away so as not to overwhelm her.

“I guess when it rains, it pours,” said Debbie, recalling how she split her time between Spaulding with Alexandra and Mass. General Hospital, where Ryan was undergoing surgery.

Ryan has since had two additional surgeries, although the doctors were unable to remove the tumor due to its location on one of his cranial nerves. The plan now is to shrink it with radiation, which he recently completed, followed by a lengthy course of chemotherapy.

Debbie said she “fell apart” when she first heard the news, but generally had no time to process it because of what was happening with Alexandra.

“No one in our family has ever had cancer,” she said. “And now the first person is my oldest son, and to have it be a brain tumor and finding out when my daughter was sitting there with part of her skull off, it was overwhelming.”

Yet somehow, some way, she has been able to keep it together, and so have her children despite having been dealt these circumstances that seem both cruel and unfair.

Debbie said Ryan actually told her recently that this has been the best year of his life, for it taught him to appreciate what he has and “opened his eyes to a lot of things.”

She said he has participated in a number of recent fundraisers and charity races, and next Saturday, October 13, the entire family will join him for the Boston Brain Tumor Walk at Carson Beach.

“He has just a really good outlook on all of it,” said Debbie, “and he told me he feels fantastic.”

As for Alexandra, her mother said she he is doing much better physically and is making good progress in her classes. She rarely, if ever, dwells on her injuries, and she has taken responsibility for not wearing her seatbelt.

Debbie, meanwhile, is doing the best that one could expect of a mother in her situation — meaning she seems strong on the outside and is generally a “nervous wreck” on the inside.

“There’s definitely trauma there,” she acknowledged. “On the inside, my mind is always ticking.”

A woman of strong Catholic faith, Debbie said sometimes people ask her if she ever gets angry at God for all that has happened, but her answer is always the same.

“I actually feel the opposite,” she said. “If I didn’t have my faith, let me tell you, I’d fold up.”

“If I didn’t have faith,” she repeated, “I don’t know what else I would do to try and get through this. It just seems mind boggling that so many of these things are happening.”

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Those who would like to support the Hildred family during their time of need can do so by sending a check, payable to “Alexandra Hildred Fund,” to HarborOne Credit Union, 95 Washington Street (Village Shoppes), Canton, MA 02021. To make a donation to Ryan’s team in the Boston Brain Tumor Walk, go to www.braintumorcommunity.org/BTW-MA and search for Ryan Carpenter under the list of participants.

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