'I wasn't expected to recover'

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By Jane Elliott Health reporter, BBC News

Jade is now studying for her maths

When Jade Bracey was awarded her teacher training degree, it was a proud moment for her and her whole family - and a moment many never expected to see.

Six years ago, while celebrating her 15th birthday, the 21-year-old was hit by a car.

Her skull was so badly injured she was not expected to live.

"My parents were told that I might die on the way to hospital," said Jade.

Brain surgery

"I had hit my head on the road and had fractured the back of my skull and badly damaged my brain from the impact of the hit. I had five hours of brain surgery and part of my right frontal lobe removed."

She spent her birthday and the next two weeks in a coma in intensive care at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

My friends ignored me and kids would stare at me and say horrible things. I had no one Jade Bracey

Her parents were told she was unlikely to walk or talk again.

Gradually though, she started to recover and a month later she was transferred back to her local hospital in Welwyn Garden City before moving to the Children's Trust, a national charity working with children who have multiple disabilities which based in Tadworth, Surrey

Here Jade had intensive speech and language therapy and physiotherapy.

They also helped her piece together her life - vital after such a traumatic injury.

"Someone at the trust explained what having an acquired brain injury is like - a filing cabinet," she said.

"It is as though your whole life and everything you can do or know or think or feel are sheets of paper, and they are all stored in this special filing cabinet which is your head.

Jade fund raises for the Children's Trust

"When your have a head injury it is as if someone has taken that filing cabinet emptied it and all the papers are scattered and muddled up. Some are even missing.

"What the trust did for me was to pick up all the papers and give them back to me sorted out and organised.

"When a paper was missing, I learned new ways to do things and learned how to sort out my own papers for myself," she said.

Being bullied

The trust enrolled Jade in a local school and drama group, but she was desperate to get back to her old school.

And after 40 weeks at the trust she did, but she was thoroughly miserable. She found everything changed following the accident.

She found studying hard, because her injuries had left her with a very poor memory and she was bullied.

"I had to have all my hair shaved off for surgery. I'd had lovely long brown hair, but I had to have a number two all over, which is horrific when you are a teenage girl.

"I had a hole where they had done the surgery so I had to wear a helmet.

"My plan had been to do A Levels, but it was not the same as I was being bullied," she said.

"I had to drop four of my GCSEs so that I could concentrate on my main subjects, but I didn't want to drop down a year.

"School was not fun any more. It was hell. My friends ignored me and kids would stare at me and say horrible things.

"I had no one."

Memory problems

Jade had always dreamed of becoming a primary school teacher and before the accident she had been predicted to get good grades.

But she left and did a two year diploma in nursery nursing, before doing her degree.

Now she just needs her maths GCSE, which she is doing at night school, and she is determined to teach.

"I always thought it would be harder to do the degree because of my memory.

"I have always worried it would tie me down, it has been hard and it is still hard, but I am going to be a teacher," she said.

Dr Serena Haywood, a neuro-rehabilitation specialist at the Children's Trust, said that there were thousands of children in the UK, like Jade, affected by brain injuries every year.

She said it was vital they were given every possible chance to achieve their goals.

"Some are left severely disabled and require residential rehabilitation and long term support. For others the problems are more hidden but just as significant.

"The length and degree of the recovery period following the injury varies from child to child - the brain is complicated and much depends on the nature and severity of the damage.

"Many continue to make progress for the rest of their lives although it is difficult to say whether they will recover completely. It is clear in severe cases that the individual will always be affected in some way by their brain injury," she said.

Liz Haigh-Reeve, at the Children's Trust, said Jade is a shining example of what can be done.