Logan’s doing just fine

One moment 17-year-old Logan Olson was laughing and screaming with her dad, brothers and cousins in a Post Falls haunted house on Halloween 2001. The next moment, she collapsed, her heart silent. An emergency worker began CPR until an ambulance arrived.

Olson was born with a congenital heart condition. She had her first open heart surgery when she was 6 days old and had six heart surgeries by the time she was 16.

Her parents still don’t know exactly why she had the attack at the haunted house. Her heart should have been able to stand a little excitement.

Six days earlier she had returned from her second missionary trip to Russia.

After the attack, Olson fell into a coma and woke up with severe brain damage. She had to start all over again, learning first how to sit up in a chair and swallow a mouthful of water. A nurse told her parents the general rule of brain injuries: Improvements made in the first year are about all a person gets.

“We fought hard for an inch,” said Laurie Olson, 45, Logan’s mother. “And we’d get it.”

More than three years later they’re still fighting, and Logan is still making improvements. By fall, she wants to walk on her own.

In January, after doing schoolwork at home, the 20-year-old woman returned to classes at North Central High School. In June, she walked across the stage ahead of her younger brother during the graduation ceremony to receive a certificate of attendance. She will return to North Central in the fall for a final year of school, something guaranteed by the state constitution for students until they reach age 21.

Now Logan wants to reach out to those like her who are young and deal with physical disabilities. She is in the early stages of developing a fashion magazine for girls with disabilities. You may have heard of the magazines O, Elle and Jane. Someday there might be Logan.

She and her family are still trying to network with possible writers, advertisers and financial backers.

Inch by inch, Logan’s family and their faith have made gains in getting their daughter back to the way she was before her accident.

“We lean on the power of family and one-on-one handling,” Laurie Olson said. “There’s a lot of power in touch.”

When Logan was born her face and lips were blue. Her mother, a full-time mom, and her father, a biker with tattoos up his arms, could only wait for a surgery to replace a heart valve. The procedure was fairly new in 1985. A boy died during surgery the day before Logan was to receive the same procedure, Laurie Olson said.

“Logan was part of us being brought to the Lord,” the mother said. “All of a sudden, I was praying to a God I’d never talked to before.” She remembers pleading, “Don’t take her.”

Logan’s dad, Tim Olson, is president of Soul Patrol Ministry and has “Jesus” tattooed across his belly.

Logan grew up tall with a love of clothes and fashion. Through the Calvary Chapel, she went on two missions to Russia. At home, she cherished her newly obtained driver’s license and the freedom to go where she wanted.

She had joined her family at the Post Falls Lions Club’s Annual Haunted House and it was about 9:30 p.m. when Logan was moving with the group through a pitch-black room where hidden volunteers can be seen only by their glow-in-the-dark hands and masks. According to news accounts in 2001, Logan lost her balance and collapsed, her head hitting the leg of a volunteer. The lights were turned on, and Logan’s father rushed to her side. Tom Sharp, a Lion’s club member and emergency medical technician found no pulse.

She was rushed to Kootenai Medical Center in Coeur d’Alene. That’s when her mom got the call at home.

“Laurie, Logan’s hurt,” Tim Olson told his wife.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know what happened,” he said.

Doctors in Coeur d’Alene started her heartbeat, but it was going much too fast. The hospital flew her and her dad by helicopter to Sacred Heart Medical Center. Laurie Olson drove the car up Interstate 90 that night and watched the helicopter rise and fly away. “It felt like the Lord was carrying them really quick.”

Doctors tried all night to get a steady heartbeat. “We didn’t know if we’d watch her die that night,” she said.

A pastor from her church gave her a passage from Isaiah 26:3-4: “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you.”

That was the beginning of her belief that she could stay strong for her daughter instead of getting stuck in self-pity, she said.

Later she saw a sign at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute that said, “They don’t need your pity. They need your love and care.”

“A lot of families fall apart when you go through a trauma like this,” Laurie Olson said.

She remembers six weeks after the accident. Two workers came in, one sat in front of Logan, another behind her. They lifted her head while one asked the girl to hold it up.

Her head flopped down. But then her mother watched her struggle to lift her head. She was waking up.

Her arms were frozen as if raised in response to being startled, a common condition of the coma, the mother said.

“I was born again. Twice,” Logan said.

Medical staff spent three months teaching her to sit up in bed. Therapists started her on a standing machine. She could support her weight for only two minutes at a time. Her mother would feed her by wrapping her hands around her daughter’s hand and lifting a utensil to her mouth. Eventually, she could move on her own.

“It was painstakingly slow,” Logan said.

When she started talking again, it was her mom who could first translate the indistinct sounds. Logan would ask every nurse, “Are you a Christian?” and “What church do you go to?”

Now she can write her name and fill out a job application. She’s still working on learning to type.

In January, after catching up on her schoolwork in a home-based program, Olson met with Spokane Public School officials.

She remembers watching her daughter walk through the front doors at North Central and stop at the flurry of activity and noise as students moved though the hallways.

“I was terrified at first,” Logan said. But then she said something that she would say many more times that year: “Mom and Dad, I’m fine.”

She had practiced countless hours walking through stores and malls.

Mary O. Goebel, a North Central High School special education teacher, met with the Olsons and mapped out a plan. Logan’s goal was to develop a magazine for girls with disabilities, so they’ve worked on Logan’s organization skills, typing and communication abilities.

Her brothers, T.J., 18, who just graduated, and David, 17, who will be a senior, would visit regularly.

“It’s really about making a plan about what’s best for her,” Goebel said. “I think she was ready to come back when her parents were a little hesitant.”

She attended half days three times a week and may go more next year.

In six months, Goebel has seen Logan’s memory and concentration improve. What also helped was a hand-held computer that contained her daily schedule and emitted verbal messages about appointments.

When graduation came, Goebel suggested that Logan receive a certificate of attendance for completing the school year and come back for one more year. Logan wanted to appear on stage for the graduation ceremony. Her parents were concerned she would fall while moving across the stage with her walker.

If she starts to lose her balance, she can’t stop her fall.

Logan wore new shoes and tripped three times on the way up to the stage, Goebel said.

Everyone practically held their breath as Logan moved across the stage on her two feet, a little slower than the others. But she arrived all on her own, to the other side.