MOMENTUM

In December 2001, Cassandra Bryant got the lowest possible score on the Glasgow Coma Scale.

After a horrible car crash, a doctor urged that she be taken off life support. Her injuries were extensive; neurologically, she registered as dead.

Wednesday, Bryant, 21, graduated from Palmer High School.

“We didn’t think this day would come,” said her mother, Cheryl Bryant. “They said there was no hope.”

After six months in a coma and another four years of rehabilitation therapy, Cassandra Bryant has relearned how to walk and write. She cannot speak clearly, although her family can understand what a stranger cannot. She also has extensive trouble with shortterm memory.

Still, she wears an almostconstant smile on her face.

Bryant walked across the stage unassisted — without her walker — to get her diploma.

“Come to my graduation,” she wrote earlier on a Magna Doodle as she sat on the couch at the Bryant family’s home on Fountain Boulevard.

Bryant went back to school about a year after the car she was in flipped on Academy Boulevard after a night of partying with three friends.

The driver, a 16-year-old who had been drinking, suffered minor injuries. Bryant, then 16, was by far the most seriously injured. A 15-year-old suffered a head injury that required therapy, and a 16-yearold suffered facial cuts.

Bryant acknowledged she was a wild child.

“I was a partier,” she wrote on the Magna Doodle before slowly raising her hand to her mouth, as if she were drinking from a bottle.

Now she and her mother give presentations to teens about drinking and driving — explaining how because of booze, Bryant had to relearn to brush her teeth, to brush her hair, to pick up a fork.

“Rehab put her back together,” said her mom.

Still, she’s got far to go.

“She just kind of slowly continues to percolate and get better and better,” said Michael Nunley, a neuropsychologist with Memorial Hospital’s rehabilitation program who plans to attend graduation ceremonies today.

“She’s a great example of how youth and a lot of therapy and a lot of patience on a family’s part can let a person progress.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0236 or

cary.leider-vogrin@gazette.com