RIT Student’s Recovery from Accident Called ‘Miraculous’
Leah Van Valkenburg’s wish is to attend this week’s commencement ceremony
On April 19, Leah Van Valkenburg’s life changed in a blink.
It was on that spring morning when Leah was involved in a car accident as she drove away from the Hess gasoline station on Jefferson Road in Henrietta.
The fourth-year sports nutrition management major at Rochester Institute of Technology wouldn’t be going to class that day. Instead, she would spend the next three weeks in a coma at Strong Memorial Hospital.
The 21-year-old honors student from Frankfort, N.Y., was placed on a respirator and listed in "critical" condition with head trauma, a bruised lung and other injuries, says her father, Greg.
But signs of hope came days after Leah was transferred to the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit at St. Mary’s Hospital. It was then that Leah spoke for the first time since the accident three weeks earlier. And in a few more days she was walking with assistance.
That’s good news, of course. But it’s especially good news since there’s some place Leah wants to be—and there’s a stage she wants to cross—on May 25. One of the first things Leah expressed when she spoke her first words last week was a wish to attend RIT commencement ceremonies and receive her diploma.
"Right now, she wants to go," her father says. "Considering what she’s been through, she’s pretty darn good. She seems like her old self. We believe the doctors will let her go."
That decision will be made later this week. But, whatever the outcome, Leah’s recovery thus far has been nothing short of tremendous.
"It’s clearly a miracle," says Barbra Cerio, one of Leah’s professors at RIT, who says Leah’s classmates in the hospitality and service management department at RIT raised $1,200 for Leah’s family to help defray medical costs. Support also came from Margaret’s House, RIT’s on-campus child daycare center, where Leah was a volunteer.
Leah isn’t expected to be officially released from St. Mary’s rehabilitation unit, where she’s listed in "satisfactory" condition, until early July. But with five weeks of hard work, the former athletic trainer, long-distance bicycler and runner, and cross-country skier is already surpassing expectations in the speed of her recovery.
On May 25, Leah Van Valkenburg's life will change again. This time, as she earns the reward for four years’ worth of hard work, it’ll be a change for the better.