Mom Waits For An End To Nightmare

Helen Davidoff spends every waking hour of every day with one all-consuming thought churning through her brain:

To coax her 23-year-old daughter, Jennifer, out of the coma she slipped into after a car accident in July.

Helen has sacrificed her work, savings and social life. She has summoned a boundless devotion perhaps only a mother could possess.

She took unpaid leave from her job.

Good-hearted neighbors stepped in to care for her pets and plants at her Cheney home.

Helen’s new world is a folding bed and a rocking chair inside the beige walls of Room 225 at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute in Spokane.

“I’m here all the time, and yet it’s still so surreal,” says Helen, 52, gazing lovingly at Jennifer.

The sharp-featured young woman squirms in her hospital bed. Her open eyes are like rain-glossed windows on an abandoned building. The eyes move, but there is no sparkle of recognition. Not yet.

“We change her. We take care of her needs,” says Helen. “Once in a while, she quiets down, and I’ll go for a walk.”

No parent could plan for such a nightmare.

Disaster struck on July 12 with one of those dreaded late-night telephone calls. “You’re daughter is here,” the sterile voice of a hospital worker told Helen. “She is unresponsive.”

Jennifer suffered a head injury while riding with a friend. The two women had been drinking beer at a downtown tavern, Helen says. They left the bar heading for a friend’s apartment on the South Hill.

Always nagging her mom about wearing seat belts, Jennifer didn’t buckle up that night.

Helen says the friend took the Altamont exit heading east on Third and drove straight into a parked car. The impact spun the left side of Jennifer’s head into the car’s door post.

The driver panicked. She drove to the apartment with Jennifer, unconscious and bleeding from a deeply fractured skull. The friends called for help, but all this gobbled up precious time - time that may have worsened Jennifer’s already fragile condition.

“She lost three pints of blood,” says Helen, pursing her lips. “She’s a seat belt queen. That’s the part I couldn’t believe.” A Spokane police spokesman says charges are pending against the driver.

There’s no sure-fire routine to awaken a coma patient. Nurses joke that “winging it” is the best method because everybody reacts on such different time frames.

Helen reads to Jennifer. She plays the tapes she found in her car. Music by the Cars, the Beastie Boys and Blondie often fills Room 225.

Twice a week Elly and Dodger, Jennifer’s two huge white Great Pyrenees, drop in for a sleep-over with the sensitive, serious-minded animal lover. The dogs lick Jennifer’s hands. They lay quietly at her side.

Stefanie Taxeraas, 27, visits from Seattle to comfort and feed her younger sister.

There have been breakthroughs. Jennifer now chews and swallows food placed in her mouth. Last week Nurse Edie Altizer asked Jennifer is she’d like a piece of chocolate. The question somehow registered through the haze. “Yeah,” Jennifer responded.

She is more agitated these days. She rocks and moans. “It becomes more difficult as Jennifer begins to come out,” Helen says. “She has needs and wants. She may be in pain. But we don’t know how to help her.”

Could there be a more excruciating waiting game than this? And once Jennifer wakes up, how will the brain injury affect this once vibrant person who loved to hike and ski?

Helen continues her vigil.

“Each little step, things that would normally be nothing, is the greatest thing in the world when you are faced with this,” she says. “I just keep thinking of Jesse Jackson’s advice to ‘keep hope alive.”’

, DataTimes MEMO: A trust fund for Jennifer Taxeraas has been set up. Donations can be made at any Washington Trust Bank.