Michigan City's Brinckman making 'miracle' recovery from injury

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What happened to Michigan City senior Courtney Brinckman on April 28, her track coach, Tim Bumber, called "the scariest thing I've ever seen as a coach or a fan of athletics."

What has happened since -- from those first few frightening days of wondering whether his daughter would survive a freak pole-vaulting accident, to seeing her make an improbable and inspirational recovery -- Phil Brinckman is calling "a miracle."

That's the turbulent swing of emotions the Brinckman family -- Phil, his wife, Dottie, and sons, Matt and Ryan -- have experienced since the moment they got that fateful phone call. It came from Wolves assistant track coach Cheryl Bohlim.

"'She's got a pulse, and she's breathing,'" Phil remembered Bohlim saying. "I said, 'Is that all you can tell us?' She said, 'It doesn't look good.'"

Courtney could have called it quits after breaking the school record in the pole vault that day, clearing 10 feet in a meet at Valparaiso High School. But the standout student with a 4.0 grade-point average and an academic scholarship to Indiana University wanted to take a practice run.

As she vaulted into the air, she lost her grip on the bar.

"She did a flip backwards and landed on the back of her head," Phil said.

Courtney, who was not wearing a helmet, was rushed to Porter hospital in Valparaiso, where she stayed overnight before being transferred to the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

The first five days, doctors moderated Courtney's brain swelling with medication. When they tried to wean her off the medication, her intracranial pressure skyrocketed to a potentially deadly level.

"If the (intracranial pressure) goes over 20, that's the danger zone," Phil said. "It shot up to 48. Those were the days when we weren't sure whether she was going to survive."

That's when doctors decided, on May 4, to administer a decompressive craniectomy, a risky neurosurgical procedure in which part of the skull is removed to allow the brain room to swell.

"A day or two after that she started squinting, barely opening her eyes, and things have been progressing since then," Phil said.

Squinting, which was followed soon after by twitching toes and fingers, was the first voluntary movement Courtney made after the accident.

"Doctors said you could consider it a coma by the textbook description, but really she wasn't in coma," Phil said. "We could get her to respond by reflex."

While unconscious those first few days, Courtney could hear what was going on around her.

"When she woke up, she already knew she had had surgery and that her skull was in her abdomen," Phil said.

The skull bit removed during the surgery is still implanted, within a subcutaneous pouch, in Courtney's abdomen (it will be a few weeks before it is reattached). She's still in the hospital, with plenty of rehabilitation still ahead of her. And Phil still doesn't know whether his daughter will make a complete physical recovery.

But she is talking, eating, walking with assistance and showing no signs of brain damage. And her prognosis is exponentially better than it was 2 � weeks ago.

"She's pretty witty. When her friends come visit her she can keep them all laughing," said Phil, who alternates hospital shifts with his wife so that one of them is by Courtney's bed at all hours.

"She remembers everything. If she loses anything it's going to be a little coordination. As hard as that is to deal with, being an athlete her whole life, we'd rather have her mind and her personality sharp."

Courtney was removed from intensive care last Friday. Currently, she is at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, where she is seeing occupational, speech and physical therapists.

"They were all surprised to see how good she's doing," Phil said. "She's come a long way. It's really been a miracle."

Contact David Robb at 648-3122, drobb@post-trib.com or visit his blog at blogs.post-trib.com/robb.