michigan, not far from her family s home. monday, may 22nd let me take a minute here and try to answer a frequently asked question. so is laura out of the coma now? well, the answer to that is yes. however, is she alert, bright-eyed, and aware of all that s going on? no. her brain needs to be retrained or reminded, perhaps, to handle information. once again, it s going to be a long road for her. this waking up process is a slow one. but now that laura had at least partially regained consciousness, her long-time boyfriend noticed something else that was unusual. well, aaron, her boyfriend, at one point looked at her eyes and said, the color appears different. did he discuss that with you? i believe so. they were a little more blue, maybe. a little more blue. they had more of a greenish hue as you remembered them? yeah.
had to get used to the fact that whitney was gone. those first few weeks must have been impossible? they were hard. they re like a blur to me. we felt this huge hole in our hearts. even though we have this hope, even though we know that one day we ll see each other again, it doesn t diminish the pain. on may 18th, a big day. moved laura from the hospital to a rehabilitation center here in grand rapids. uh-huh. were you nervous about the move? i was. why? what made you nervous? every new move, every new thing they did was anxious for me. not knowing if she was ready medically. on the other hand, it had to be a feeling that you made a big step getting her closer to home. yes, yes. she was on the road to getting back home for good. right. laura was transported to spectrum health continuing care center in grand rapids,
drive away. their father was on a church trip in mississippi. carly tried to call them both. but couldn t get through at first. we were talking on the phone, about 10:00. newell kept on hearing that little beep on the phone. call waiting. someone was trying to get through. kind of ignored it because we just had a chance to catch up on what was going on. then she tried me. that s when she didn t talk long at all. she s like, mom, you need to pray. and so we i was kind of scared. i just started praying. at about the same time, laura van ryn s parents and sister were all at home in caledonia. their phone rang as well. someone said, is this the van ryn residence? i thought maybe it was a telemarketer or something. i was all ready to say, we re not interested. i think he said something like, we have your daughter, laura, in the hospital in ft. wayne.
suzy called her her sunshine girl. i think we did that you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. quite often i would sing this is the day the lord has made just the chorus. very quietly. because i m kind of quiet. in the intensive care unit, laura and her family were surrounded by loved ones. we had huge amounts of visitors. and so we took two or three at a time because you had to keep it real low key, numerous friends went back to see laura. they went and they saw laura. n see laura. they went and they saw laura. did anyone come to you and say they felt unusual, that they saw anything unusual, that they had any doubts, fears, anything? no. not one person? no. no. laura started moving a lot more today. at times, she squeezes hands, wiggles toes, squints her eyes, though still closed, and moves her legs and arms. she s still in a comatose state,
she had several names. we just thought that she was very confused and maybe she had had a nurse by the name of april or something was why she said that to me. laura also called her boyfriend aaron hunter and told him to lie down. but it s not unusual for brain-injured patients to call people by the wrong name or even to misidentify themselves. and, besides, laura was showing many signs of regaining her memory and her identity. so here you re showing your daughter a picture of her roommates, and she knows every one of their names. she did. i said, great, laura, good job. amazing. and there were other things she did that were very laura-like. like what? the leg was shaking. laura would always shake her leg. she was strong, had strong legs. laura had those soccer legs, you know? we d say stuff, oh, yeah, that s laura right there. that s so laura. she s slowly coming back to you as laura.