Feel-Good Friday: Mother in a Coma for Five Years Wakes Up, Is Able to See Her Son Play Football

redstate.com

This Feel-Good Friday story is about miracles — something that we need to believe in right now. This week’s news has been particularly troubling, and many fear that our country is irretrievably lost. But if a mother can be resurrected from a coma when all hope was lost for her recovery, our country can be resurrected from the damage being done to it. The story of Jennifer Flewellen is meant to encourage us to never give up hope.

In 2017, Jennifer Flewellen, a mother of three, was driving on M139 in Niles, Michigan, when she lost control of her vehicle and collided with a utility pole on the side of the road. After being found unconscious at the scene, Flewellen was rushed to Lakeland Hospital, where doctors gave Flewellen’s family the tragic news: Jennifer was in a coma from which she would never awaken.

However, four years and 11 months later, in an unexpected moment, Flewellen beat the odds in the most beautiful way.

It’s a miracle — and it all started with a joke.

As Jennifer Flewellen, of Niles, Michigan, lay motionless in a hospital bed last year, stuck in a nearly five-year coma caused by a car crash, her mother Peggy Means told her a joke. Then the impossible happened: Flewellen, 41, laughed.

“When she woke up, it scared me at first because she was laughing and she had never done that,” Means tells PEOPLE. “Every dream came true. Today’s the day I said, ‘That door that was closed, that kept us apart, had just opened. We were back.'”

The August 2022 breakthrough was just the first step in a long battle for Flewellen, who is working hard to regain her speech and mobility after being in a cocoon state where time ceased as her brain slowly healed. A GoFundMe campaign has been started to help buy a handicap van and home remodels.

“She woke up, but she didn’t completely. She couldn’t speak, but she was nodding,” Means, 60, says. “She would still sleep a lot right at first, but then as the months would go by, she would get stronger and be more awake.”

Fast forward to October of 2023, and Flewellen was able to attend the football night of her youngest son Julian, now 17.

“Nobody expected her to wake up. We were told all along that she has anoxia and that the brain damage, she’ll never wake up, but you never say never.”

Flewellen encouraged her three sons to take up sports, added Means.

“She said, ‘I don’t want my kids on the streets; I want them in sports’. And she really pushed them, and she was a big screamer. Everybody that knew Jenn, she was very loud. They (her kids) used to say, ‘I couldn’t even hear my coach, Mom; you were louder than the coach’.”

Flewellen’s story shows the power of a loving mother, and the power of family and community to facilitate this miracle…