8-week-old McKenna shows signs of waking up after being hit in the head by a softball
A baby who was hit in the head by a softball last week started showing her first signs of waking up on Wednesday.
McKenna Hovenga, just 7 weeks old when the errant softball throw struck her in the head in Waverly, Iowa, last Wednesday, gave her mother hope after a morning filled with mostly bad news.
Kassy Hovenga gave the hopeful update about her daughter on Facebook.
"Everyone close your eyes right now and tell this little girl to keep going!!!!!!!!! I don’t want to jinx anything but she just showed us her first sign of waking up!!! It may have been small, but after the morning of bad news she was saying “hey mom and dad, I’m here, don’t give up on me!!!!” She showed me this sign right when I needed it the most!!!!!!"
The "Healing for McKenna" Facebook page has more than 163,000 followers, and is filled with thoughts, prayers and messages of encouragement to help push the baby and family through the hard stages of not knowing what's next.
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McKenna was in her mother's arms watching her dad play softball when the overthrown ball hit her.
She was immediately airlifted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Mayo Clinic's Saint Marys Hospital to treat a fractured skull and bleeding of her brain that resulted in numerous seizures, some of them lasting close to two hours long.
She was mostly seizure-free Friday through Tuesday, but had four seizures Wednesday morning that lasted 1-2 minutes each.
A separate Facebook update says a CT scan Wednesday morning showed two areas of brain damage, but the bleeding around her brain had stopped. .
"It is so very hard to wait and wait and not know," the child's great aunt wrote in an update. "So... Day by day it is. We know it's going to take time... It's just hard."
A YouCaring fundraiser has, so far, raised $43,000 for the family.
