Lauren Taylor grew up around horses. She competed in all three rings as a junior, eventually accepting a working student position in Ireland with Cian O’Connor as a 17-year-old. When that barn closed, she came back to America, where she landed a working student position in Wellington, Florida, with Tori Colvin for the winter beginning her last junior year.  She continued training her horse, Speechless, under the watchful eye of Brigid Colvin.

Following the winter circuit, Lauren obtained a job working for the Ingrams. She worked there for one year before being kicked in the head while hand-grazing one of her boss’s horses. The accident happened while in Aiken, South Carolina, on 5/12/19.  Lauren suffered a severe traumatic brain injury, collapsed lung, and broken nose and skull. She spent her first 12 days post-accident in a level-one trauma center in Augusta, Georgia. Her chance of survival was less than 7% with a less-than-1% possibility of enjoying any quality of life.  Lauren was completely unconscious and then minimally conscious for almost three months. She lived off of a ventilator, tracheostomy, and feeding tube during that time. She spent six months in acute care in Atlanta, Georgia, followed by six additional months in the post-acute setting in Omaha, Nebraska. Every aspect of Lauren’s brain was damaged, thereby affecting her speech, vision, balance, perceptions, memory, and the ability to reason and process emotions.

Although many doctors and therapists told Lauren that her ambition of walking again without a device was not realistic, she refused to give up. Today, Lauren jokes that she is not a “good mover,” but is now “serviceably sound.”

See what Lauren is up to now here:  https://www.ksdk.com/article/life/heartwarming/st-louis-woman-recovery-brain-injury/63-54af9df5-335e-40a5-bd9a-cdbd3009d4fd

Help HETRA work toward our mission, helping others like Lauren with a donation:  https://www.classy.org/give/168754/#!/donation/checkout