Tammy Faye Tipton here.  Hope this finds you all well.  As for me, I wish I could say we were okay, but ever since our daughter was injured last fall, our world has just about fallen completely apart.

Last November (in fact, the week before Thanksgiving), our daughter, Jon-Earicka, who is ten, was crossing the street, when she was hit by a speeding driver, who then drove off and never returned to the scene.  The driver, it turned out, was blind drunk.  Our daughter was left with catastrophic head (and other) injuries; she now has permanent brain damage and can no longer walk, feed herself, dress herself, or talk.  She is currently in a rehab hospital, where she has been going through extensive therapies, but I personally don't see any of it doing any good.

Jon-Earicka remains about the same.  She is awake, but she isn't really aware.  She just sits there in her wheelchair when up or lies in her bed, just staring ahead.  How much she knows or remembers .... that part is unclear.  The damage to her young brain was rather extreme: she may never regain any of her normal functions, according to her doctors.

In other words, Jon-Earicka will probably always need someone to care for her for the rest of her life.  She is like a newborn baby, no longer like the vibrat, fun-loving, happy ten-year-old little girl she once was prior to The Accident That Changed Her Forever.

The holidays were the worst we had ever experienced.  You try spending weeks in a Pediatric Intensive Care Waiting Area and see how joyful YOU feel, especially knowing that your daughter may never be the same ever again.  It was a total nightmare and it still is.  The woman who hit our daughter is now free on bail and is probably back to living her old life while our daughter is changed due to this bitch's unexcusable actiions.  

Angry? Damn right, I'm angry!!  VERY angry!!  I have been trying to see any good out of this tragedy that's befallen our family and I find it hard to forgive someone who knowingly changed my daughter's life as we knew it!  Now Paidric, Jon-Earicka's baby brother, will never know what it is like to have a big sister who can teach him things or show him the ways of this world.  His sister will probably end up needing HIS care when he is older, even though Paidric is her little baby brother!

Jimmy has been trying to get this woman who'd injured our baby girl thrown back into prison, but each time they try to locate this woman, she flees, which leaves the police and those working on the case flummoxed becasue they can't find her.   He's as frustrated as I am about this entire thing!

Well, I am going to see Jon-Earicka, to see if I can get some semblence of life out of her.  I am tired of having to be disappointed like this time and time again!  We all could use a miracle, but what I really want is my intelligent, sweet-natured, lively Jon-Earicka Grace back!  I don't want this stranger, a child who can no longer do things for herself!!

~Tammy Faye, Jon-Earicka's mother.  :(