Get ready to shed some happy tears which are much better than sad tears in my personal experience. Buckle up for this emotional roller coaster.
It all started with a video on Instagram, which has gotten more than 3 million views in just a week.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BWbb6JMDWuH/
The story behind the video is where the tearjerker part of this story begins:
Laura Browning Grant and Jonathan Grant were married about six years ago.
In March, Browning received one of the worst calls anyone could ever get. It was from a nurse in the emergency room informing her that her husband had been in a car accident and was unresponsive. Turns out that Grant suffered a major brain injury: bleeding in the brain and diffuse axonal injury which left him in a coma. He also had other internal injuries related to the brain injury and minor cuts and bruises on his arms, legs, and face.
That type of injury usually results in only a slim chance of survival. Browning was convinced that he was going to wake up the next day but he didn’t. Browning had to continue to hoping every single day for seventeen days until he squeezed her hand on that seventeenth day. He was still in the coma but that was a sign that he could hear what was going on around him. After about a month he was declared in stable condition even though he was still coma and was transferred to a rehab facility to regain consciousness.
Browning packed up their life in North Carolina and moved into a hotel by Grant’s rehab center in Virginia.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BScBQ13DGjI/?taken-by=laurabpilates
Two months later, on May 16, Grant’s doctors declared him fully conscious.
While that was miraculous, Grant still had a long way to go. He now can breathe without a breathing tube and can eat all his meals without a feeding tube but he is still fully independent otherwise.
While this couple could easily win a “couple of the year” award, Browning pointed out that it is still really hard.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BUp_Xt8jqJN/?taken-by=laurabpilates
Grant still hasn’t regained his speech and sometimes will lash out at her inadvertently because of the stress and upset that goes along with recovering from a brain injury. Even when she has spent 10 hours a day at the rehab facility with him, she still misses him and the relationship they used to have.
Browning was completely surprised that the video went viral but the video meant a lot to Browning herself. It was the first time in a long time that she had been able to get a glance of the person that Grant used to be before his accident.
Browning is taking it day by day.
