HALIFAX—In what her mother calls a “Christmas miracle,” a Nova Scotia woman who suffered a catastrophic brain injury in a 1996 car accident communicated one-on-one with her mother for the first time in 21 years.Louise Misner said her 37-year-old daughter, Joellan Huntley, used eye-motion cameras and software on an iPad to respond to a comment from Misner about her clothes.Huntley has been severely disabled since she was 15, unable to walk or talk and fed through a tube. She has always responded to family members’ presence by making sounds, but was unable to communicate any thoughts.The breakthrough occurred during a Christmas Day visit at the Kings Regional Rehabilitation Centre in Waterville, N.S.“I said ‘Joellan I like your new Christmas outfit you got on,’ ” Misner said in a telephone interview on Friday.Misner said her daughter then used the technology to find an icon for a short-sleeve shirt.“And then she said no, and went to a long-sleeve shirt because she was trying to tell me what she had on.”Misner said her reaction was immediate to what had been a long-hoped-for personal communication.“Christmas miracle,” she said. “It was God’s way of telling me that she’s finally achieved what she needed to since the accident.”Huntley was thrown from a car that had swerved to avoid a dog that was running loose along a road in Centreville, N.S., on April 18, 1996. The accident claimed the life of her boyfriend and a young girl who was the sister of the driver.Huntley’s family eventually won a $1-million insurance settlement as a result of the crash, but by 2014 they found themselves embroiled in a court battle with the province’s Community Services Department, which sought to claw back the money for past and future care costs.An undisclosed out-of-court settlement was reached in April 2015, after Joellan’s family argued they needed the money for care that ...
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