Courses in healing
Amaryssa Byers has had two miracles in her life.
The first was surviving a fall off a moving car four years ago, an accident that left her in a coma for 10 days with severe brain swelling. The second is she will graduate with her class at University High School in June despite flunking all her freshman classes and most of her sophomore classes.
“I started my junior year with four and a half credits because I had to relearn everything,” Byers said. In her junior year she enrolled in her school’s alternative center, which allowed her to make up credits at an accelerated rate.
The accident that stole Byers’ memory happened July 1, 2004. She and a friend perched on the back of a friend’s hatchback as the car traveled down the street. Byers fell off as the car turned a corner and fractured her skull on the pavement.
Doctors thought she might be brain dead and said if she ever woke up, she’d probably be a vegetable. Her father wrote her eulogy. “I died twice,” Byers said. “I died the fourth day and the 10th day.”
Doctors brought her back each time. Everyone was amazed when she opened her eyes one day and asked for a drink of water. One of her doctors, Mark Buchholz, said at the time that most patients with similar head trauma never wake up. “In the hospital I couldn’t feed myself, and I couldn’t write,” she said.
Byers had daily therapy at St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute for six weeks to relearn basic functions before she went home. After that she had about three more months of therapy to work on getting her body back up to speed. She still has balance problems, but her memory seems fine. The accident did erase some memories of her childhood, and she had to relearn everything.
“I couldn’t do any division or multiplication,” she said. “Pretty much I had to start over as a kid at 14 years old.”
Her parents didn’t let her out of the house much for the first year or so after the accident. “It took them a while to get their trust back,” she said.
She remains friends with only two of the girls who were in the car that day. The driver, who had been Byers’ friend since elementary school, was convicted of vehicular assault and failure to remain at the scene of an accident. She and two other girls involved dropped out of school, Byers said. “All communication was lost,” she said. “I tried to talk to them after the accident, and they wouldn’t talk to me.”
She started high school on time, only weeks after the accident. “I was in regular classes,” she said. “I failed every one of my classes my freshman year.”
Things started looking up when she got into the alternative program her junior year, and she was able to start making up credits. “I thought I was going to be in high school until I was 21,” she said.
Scott Sutherland, director of the alternative program, said he’s been impressed with Byers. “She was way behind in credits,” he said. “I think she was still having some mental processing problems. She has just worked really hard and got better and better.”
Byers is one of his best students and has made the honor roll. “She’s a great kid, and she’s working really hard,” he said. “She’s a much better student, and she can focus better.”
Byers is grateful she was allowed in the program. “We do a lot more work,” she said. “This class is the reason I’m graduating on time.”
She plans to attend Spokane Community College in the fall and go on to Washington State University to become a pediatric nurse. Her stay in the hospital is part of the reason for her career choice, but she said she also likes kids.
Byers isn’t worried about tough college classes. “I’m a straight-A student,” she said.