The sister of CrossFit coach Kerrie Olsen revealed some of the gnarly details of the golf cart crash in Puerto Vallarta that left Olsen with a traumatic brain injury.
“Her original skull piece was not a good move to reattach,” Olsen’s sister, Heidi Gustavson, shared via Facebook on Sunday, May 10. “We are forever grateful for all the love, prayers, and that we did NOT do the surgery to put it back on in Mexico. It was covered in bacteria.”
Olsen returned to her home in Utah via medical evacuation last week, where she was admitted to the ICU. She had a custom skull piece made out of ceramic and is set to undergo surgery on Monday, May 11, according to her sister.
Olsen fell out of a golf cart while vacationing with her husband, Paul, and a group of couples last month. She sustained a subdural hematoma and had massive bleeding around her brain. After being transported to a Mexican hospital and undergoing surgery, she made it back stateside for additional treatment on Wednesday, May 6.
“She has a lot to work through and a lot to process,” Gustavson wrote via Facebook on Saturday, May 9. “She is a fighter and this will be a day by day thing for a while. She might regress [some days] so it’s important for all of us to just keep rooting for her. This is extremely hard on all of us and we are all working through so much.”
She added, “Yesterday our Daddy spent some time with her. Just the two of them. He held her hand and just sang and spoke to her. She tried so hard to focus and it is such a touching painful thing. Day by day my friends.”
Olsen’s recovery journey received an optimistic update on Friday, May 8, when the GoFundMe set up in her honor revealed her breathing tube had been removed.
“She is coming back to us,” the page said. “It has been an emotional couple of days, but today we have something real to celebrate.”
The fundraiser added, “She has had a CT, MRI, blood work, and more tests than we can count since coming home, and the medical team is now putting together a full plan for what comes next. Physical therapy started yesterday — for her mind and small movements. The progress she has made in such a short time has been nothing short of incredible — but this is going to take a lot of time. We are having wins, and we will celebrate every single one. But there will be setbacks too, and we are prepared to walk through all of it with her.”
Olsen’s GoFundMe has raised over $100,000 at the time of publication.
