After her accident, doctors said Kate Dendrinos-Rickel wouldn’t live. She did. They said if she lived, she would never speak. Then she spoke. They said if she ever managed to speak, she would never walk. Then she walked.
Seven years after their should-have-been-fatal motorcycle crash, Dendrinos-Rickel and now-husband Shawn Rickel aim to finally open their Big View Equine Therapy Program at their ranch in Golden toward the end of April 2010.
On the day of the August 2002 accident, the couple was riding out to look at properties where they could launch a new business idea: an equine therapy program to encourage confidence and physical activity for disabled and underprivileged children.
It took several rounds of surgery, relentless setbacks and seven years for the Rickels to achieve that goal.
Their book, “I Am Not Supposed To Be Here,” detailing the accident and Dendrinos-Rickel’s unlikely recovery, was published two weeks ago. A portion of the proceeds from its sale is helping to pay for Big View’s equine arena and operations.
The project was sidelined for years after a truck pulled out of an intersection and clipped Shawn Rickel’s motorcycle, sending them both reeling.
Dendrinos-Rickel suffered brain damage so severe that surgeons had to remove about 15 percent of her brain.
“I was told everything that controls speech in her brain was gone,” Shawn Rickel said. “He (the surgeon) had blood on his clothes and on his shoes and told me she probably wouldn’t live.”
But Dendrinos-Rickel surprised the medical community. She came out of her coma, and what’s more, she came out of her coma speaking.
It was 12 weeks before Dendrinos-Rickel could fully access speech and mobility with the help of Spalding Rehabilitation Hospital in Aurora, where she underwent speech, physical and occupational therapy.
“Kate’s progress was above the norm significantly,” said Joan Birchfield, Dendrinos-Rickel’s speech and language pathologist at Spalding.
According to Birchfield, 7 percent to 10 percent of all brain injuries are considered severe. What Dendrinos-Rickel had was “the highest level of brain injury you can have besides you not surviving it,” she said.
The majority of patients with severe brain injury do not fully recover, she estimated.
Dendrinos-Rickel’s attitude, her upbeat determination, helped her not give in to what could have been a debilitating injury.
” ‘Yes, this is awful,’ ” Dendrinos-Rickel says she remembers thinking during the worst days of therapy, “but I focused on doing as much as I possibly could.”
She says she believes it was Shawn, who never left her side, and God, who gave her strength and propelled her recovery.
“I knew God had a different plan; we were saved that day to help others.”
Victoria Barbatelli: 303-954-1698 or vbarbatelli@denverpost.com
Where to find the book
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• Clear Creek Books in Golden
