Medical updates on Jay Briscoe’s daughters following car accident

As previously noted, Jay Briscoe’s daughters were injured in the car accident that took his life on Tuesday. On Thursday evening, friends of the family shared updates in a Facebook video…

“Currently the girls are stable, but they both have a very long road of recovery ahead of them. Gracie, 12, when she originally got to Nanticoke [hospital], she couldn’t feel anything from the waist down. She was diagnosed with an L2 dislocation and an L3 and L4 fracture in her back with compression on her spinal cord. After Nanticoke got her stabilized, they transferred her to another hospital and she got feeling back in her thighs, but nothing lower than her knee. She was taken straight for a MRI and surgery on Wednesday morning around 3 AM. The doctor was able to relieve the compression on the spinal cord and surgery went as well as expected. When you have trauma to your spinal cord, it’s a waiting game. With the swelling and trauma, you have to wait. She still has feeling in her thighs, but no movement as of yet. Gracie had tingling in her feet on and off today. Her progress will be a day-to-day basis for months to come. She is bruised up pretty badly, but at this time, no other injuries have been diagnosed.”

“Jayleigh was diagnosed with an open tibia and fibula fracture at Nanticoke, where she underwent surgery. They placed an external fixator on and sent her back to the hospital. She has been diagnosed with a C7 fracture in her neck and has been placed in a neck brace, which she will be in for six weeks. She also has an L3 and L4 fracture in her back, which can be managed with a back brace for about 12 weeks. She has a right clavicle fracture from the seatbelt as well as a broken rib on the right side. She has a small left pneumothorax, which is the air between the lung and chest wall, not inside the lung. They are just monitoring that as it’s not large enough for intervention at this point, which is a blessing. Today, she was diagnosed with a perforated bowel with free fluid in her abdomen, she had some internal bleeding in her stomach area. They knew about it and they were watching it and today they were able to pinpoint it and find out where it was. That surgery went awesome, that got in there and got the bleeding under control and got her on the mend. She went to the OR for that today. They did a bowel resection, which means they took a little of it out, nothing that is long-term effects. While she was down there, the orthopedics decided to do another washout of her leg and some manipulation to the bones for better alignment. She still has the external fixator in place and they placed an NG tube down her nose to decompress her stomach. They will take it out tomorrow and this will allow her to eat.” (quotes courtesy of Jeremy Lambert)