Ashlee Stokes celebrated her 16th birthday at Touro Hospital in New Orleans last week, nearly six months after a head-on collision with an apparent drunk driver left the Slidell teenager in a coma.

Staffers at the hospital have become quite fond of the Northshore High School cheerleader and her family, so to make the day special, aides dressed up as clowns, student nurses decorated her room, and friends and family crowded in for cake and gifts.

She wasn’t, however, getting out of physical therapy.

Ashlee Stokes

“They wanted her to try to get the tissue paper out of the gifts,” said Ashlee’s mom, Karen. “Her (occupational therapist) said even though it was her party, they weren’t going to give her a break.”

The girl has made slow but steady progress since first opening her eyes about a month after the accident. She entered Touro for extensive physical rehabilitation on July 2, where she gradually began moving and responding to commands. In October, after months of coughs or low moans, she finally began to speak.

“I’ll be changing her clothes, and I’ll say, ‘Ashlee I can’t wait until you can do this,’ and she says, ‘me either,’” said Karen. “Her talking is not real clear yet, so sometimes I ask her to spell it if I can’t understand what she’s trying to say.”

Karen said her daughter can already speak in full sentences, and in the past couple of weeks she has started asking for things, initiating the request. When Ashlee gets tired she’ll start to whisper, or just mouth the words, and that’s when the speech therapist will ask her to “turn your voice on.”

Karen stays overnight during the week, while husband David stays on weekends.

She said the last six months have seemed like an eternity, peppered with good days and bad days from time to time. While the pair sometime participates in their daughter’s therapy, Karen admits how difficult it is to see her struggle.

It’s particularly troubling to know Ashlee doesn’t yet grasp what has happened to her.

“I ask her if she knows why she’s here, and she says no, and I tell her again that she was in a bad accident and she was hurt really bad,” she said. “I’ve been told that patients often won’t remember an accident, but that’s part of the healing process. I think if she fully understood what happened it would just be too overbearing.”

Ashlee continues to receive tremendous support from the community, from her classmates and cheer squad members who often visit, to the dozens of neighbors who have staged various fundraisers to help the family with mounting medical bills. Of those, one put up two 50-yard line suite tickets to the Dec. 28 Saints’ game against the Carolina Panthers for a raffle. The family doesn’t know the donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, only that he or she is acquainted with the parents of another cheerleader.

Tickets are $10 each and are available at the following Slidell locations: 204 Village Circle, Suite 1; Eddie D’s Restaurant, 39510 U.S. Highway 190 East, Slidell; Subway at Wal-Mart, 167 Northshore Blvd.; and Big Screen Video, 3003 Pontchartrain Drive. Tickets are also available at Coldwell Banker TEC, 103 Beau Chene Blvd. in Mandeville.

Ashlee still hasn’t gotten her emotions back, although she somehow manages to impress her team of therapists with her thoughtfulness, often thanking them for their help. Karen said the couple find that any length of time spent at home is the hardest, when they miss their “sweet girl.”

The family continues to pray and take things one day at a time.

“Any parent hopes their child would have been fully recovered by now, but we just hope for the best every day,” said Karen. “People ask me what do I think will happen years from now, but I just look to the day she is walking.”

For more information, go to www.ashleestokes.com.