Teen credits doctors, family, faith for recovery from brain injury

Cruising through Elgin's Williamsburg Green neighborhood on a golf cart driven by her friend around 5 p.m. on Wednesday, July 1, 2020, 17-year-old Breanna Kozlowski was singing, laughing and shooting a live online video. Her friend told her not to stand up, “but I stood up anyway,” remembers Breanna, who fell off the back of the cart and wouldn't remember anything for the next few months.

She dislocated and fractured her right ankle and smashed her head on the pavement.

The friend called Breanna's mom, Victoria Kozlowski, who rushed to the scene.

“I see her lying on the street in a pool of blood. Her eyes were rolled back,” Kozlowski says.

“Why is she shaking? Why is she shaking?” the mom yelled as rescue workers took Breanna by ambulance to nearby Amita Health Saint Joseph Hospital, where she was loaded into a helicopter and flown to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Her mom and dad, Richard Kozlowski, were forced to take turns sitting at her side because of the COVID-19 one-person-at-a-time visitor restrictions.

“The doctors said, 'We're giving your daughter a 1% chance of surviving,'” says Breanna, who has no memory of those days but has heard the stories.

Neurosurgeon Egon M. Doppenberg was on call at Lutheran General and rushed Breanna into the operating room for a six-hour surgery.

“She was in a deep coma when she came in to where she had some signs of being near brain-dead,” Doppenberg remembers. “Some very basic brain stem responses were gone.”

The pupils in her eyes didn't even respond to light.

“I was very cautious about promising survival for her,” the doctor says.

“They had to take off my skull because my brain was swelling,” Breanna says, removing her knit cap and rubbing her hand over a large sheet of synthetic material made by a 3-D printer that covers the right side and rear of her head under her scalp where her hair is growing back. Sensing the discomfort that admission can produce, she smiles and says, “I will look like me once my acne clears up and I grow my long, blond hair back.”

Doppenberg removed a 6-inch long piece of bone, cut out a blood clot and implanted a drain in her brain, but even then, Breanna wasn't out of danger.

“It's always a wait-and-see game,” Doppenberg says, noting that Breanna's age played a factor in her recovery. “If you have patients like her, you need to give her a chance.”

After surviving the surgery, Breanna's life was still at risk. “They did a fantastic job with her in ICU,” Doppenberg says of the doctors, nurses and staff who cared for while she was in a medically induced coma and beyond.

The teenager, who left Burlington Central High School to get her high school diploma online, wants to be a cosmetologist and was four months away from graduation at Pivot Point Academy in Bloomingdale when she was injured. She's headed back to school this week to see what she remembers.

She had four surgeries on her head and one to fix her ankle, was in the hospital and then Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Wheaton for a total of 98 days, and spent the first 28 days after the accident waiting to wake up from a medically induced coma.

“It was heartbreaking,” says Victoria Kozlowski, who couldn't be certain her daughter would ever wake up but continued talking to her. “I don't know if you can hear me, but I need you to say a prayer, grab God's hand, hold on to his hand and never let go because he's the one who is going to save you.”

Kozlowski remembered her grandmother telling her that prayer had more power in groups. “So the first night I got home, I reached out to everyone I knew, including all my social media contacts, and begged them to please pray for my daughter,” the mom says.

“I had such a huge response that people I had never met, from all over the world, reached out to me, letting me know they were praying for Breanna.”

A deeply religious family, the Kozlowskis had their pastor at St. Mary Church of Elgin, the Rev. Chris Kuhn, visit Breanna when she was in a coma.

When he performed the anointing of the sick sacrament and sang to her, Breanna's eyes could be seen moving even though they remained closed.

“When she fluttered her eyes for the first time, it was a miracle to me,” Victoria Kozlowski says. In a few days, the parents were able to get Breanna to lightly squeeze their hands when they asked, “Do you know who I am?”

When she first started to regain her speech, Breanna talked about a party for her 18th birthday, but her invite list didn't include any of her friends from high school. “She thought she was in middle school,” her mom says.

Walls of photographs and stories helped restore Breanna's memory. “Oh, my gosh. I'm just now realizing this,” Breanna would say as her memories returned. She came home in a wheelchair and vomited outside the front door from nausea caused by the motion and a headache, but is walking now. She has occupational therapy, physical therapy and speech therapy, as well as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, where she is placed in a chamber with increased oxygen levels.

She lost hearing in her left ear, but vision damage in her left eye is improving, and the number of migraine headaches also is decreasing. Breanna figures she's maybe 80% back to normal.

Now 18, she expects to return to her old life soon, but with a new perspective.

“My faith is strong, and this made it stronger,” says Breanna, who prays every day. “I can hear God talking to me.”

She says God has nice things to say about her parents and 14-year-old sister, Arianna.

God also responds to her prayers asking him to help her get better, Breanna says, adding, “He says he's been working on it since Day One.”

Breanna's recovery raises the spirits at Lutheran General.

“It's a fantastic story,” Doppenberg says. “She's a little miracle.”