Against all odds, a brain-injured woman received a doctorate from Lehigh University, a summit achieved after persevering for 20 years.

In 1991, a 28-year-old recently-married Patti O'Donnell of Bethlehem began her doctoral studies at Lehigh University, with her tuition covered by coaching the women's cross country and track teams.She had earned a bachelor's degree in biology/pre-med from Villanova University where she ran track on a half scholarship. Her master's degree in Secondary Education was from Lehigh where she coached during the day and took classes at night. O'Donnell was both an athlete and an "A" student.That all changed on January 15, 1992. O'Donnell, who at the time had completed two terms toward her doctorate, was entering the Lehigh University gym when she experienced her life-changing accident. From a practice session across the gym, an errant lacrosse ball, a hard rubber ball that could be hurled at speeds of 100 mph, struck her face front, smashing her nose, distorting her face, and knocking her backward onto the gym floor.She had broken bones in her nose and cheek, and her trigeminal nerve was severed."My teeth were hanging loose. I had severe headaches, and neck and upper back pain," O'Donnell recalled. "The resident didn't realize how hard the ball was, so they didn't do any MRIs to look for a brain injury."School was between terms at Lehigh, so she wasn't immediately faced with taking or teaching classes. She withdrew from coaching track for a month. She also had a paper due."My professor gave me a three-day extension," she said. "That's when I first noticed something was not right because it was taking me forever to write the paper. I handed it in - my first B-plus. There were simple things that I missed. I was devastated, and I didn't understand why."As the semester progressed, O'Donnell was developing neck and back pain, difficulty remembering, and constant headaches 24 hours-a-day, seven days-a-week."I stopped teaching because my boss could see I was white as a ghost, and he could tell I was sick," she said. "The headaches and the pain were getting worse."O'Donnell was in a bind. She didn't want to give up her doctorate, but to be able to afford to continue, she needed to coach to get the free tuition. In addition, the injury occurred while she was working for Lehigh and was being handled under Workers' Compensation.Lehigh was minimizing her injuries and O'Donnell couldn't press them for fear it would jeopardize her doctorate. She also had Blue Cross and Blue Shield medical insurance from another university, and medical insurance from her husband's job. Claiming that the Workers' Compensation should be the first to pay, the other insurance companies waited."It took four years to get into Good Shepherd Rehabilitation, where I should have been right away," O'Donnell said after her husband's insurance agreed to pay with the stipulation that Worker's Comp would pay them back. In the meanwhile, O'Donnell and her husband divorced.After years of haggling with insurance companies, lack of diagnosis and misdiagnosis, and ineffective and damaging treatment by the medical system, O'Donnell received permission to see a psychologist, who suggested that she might have a brain and a post traumatic stress injury.This was followed by a battery of tests to verify a brain injury. Meanwhile, the once athletic O'Donnell in the prime of life had become a sickly 90-pound wheelchair-bound invalid.The medical establishment began treating her, symptom by symptom, addressing her kidney stones and pancreatitis, and performing surgery on her parathyroid but not recognizing her holistic degeneration.Realizing things were not working, she turned to holistic alternatives, including massage, chiropractic and Chinese herbs. Her headaches went away and her stiffened muscles began to loosen.She began receiving hot pool, occupational, physical and cognitive therapy at Good Shepherd in Allentown, and began learning to retrain her brain to do the things that she once could do effortlessly, like walking.During this period, she spent several months in Albrightsville, Carbon County, living with and receiving assistance from her father, Richard O'Donnell, and his wife, Carol.In 2004, she reapplied to the doctoral program at Lehigh. She had to fight to get back in because, in the decade that passed, many of her contacts had moved on and departments had merged.By 2005, she was receiving assistive aid with typing, a special computer system, and most importantly, by Raven, a service dog. O'Donnell was beginning to walk using a cane and Raven helped her to maintain her balance, besides answering the phone, and getting drinks from the refrigerator.Back in class, she was frustrated because she had difficulty speaking, especially remembering educational jargon. One professor, Dr. Warren Heydenberk, took her aside, and in a method similar to that in The King's Speech, retaught her to speak."When I defended my dissertation, it was amazing," O'Donnell said. "There were 30 people in the room plus my dissertation committee. When they shot the questions at me, I knew the answers and knew them fast. I couldn't do that before."A hooding ceremony is where doctorate candidates receive their Ph. D.s. Against all odds, on May 22, 2011, three firsts happened at Lehigh University: with 77 doctorates, it was the largest hooding ceremony in the history of the university; Patti O'Donnell succeeded in her 20-year quest becoming its first brain-injured doctoral recipient, and Raven became the first dog to be hooded.