Napa woman dies of brain injury after quake (w/video)

A 65-year-old Napa woman who was hit in the head by a TV set dislodged in last month’s magnitude-6.0 earthquake has become the only fatality from the Aug. 24 tremor.

Laurie Anne Thompson died from intracranial bleeding Friday morning after days of neurological decline as her family kept vigil at Queen of the Valley Hospital, officials said.

Thompson’s children, still stunned, are using their loss to urge others in similar circumstances to ensure that loved ones seek immediate medical care any time there is a head injury, daughter Shannon Johnson said. Her mother refused initial pleas to see a doctor, she said.

“She was losing her life, and I didn’t know,” Johnson said Wednesday.

A one-time garden center clerk at Napa’s Home Depot, Thompson had only recently returned to the area after several years of caring for elderly parents in Sacramento. She was, her daughter said, “ready to start her new life” when the predawn temblor changed its course.

Asleep in a recliner in her Mayfair Drive duplex when the ground started shaking at 3:20 a.m., Thompson was knocked unconscious by the TV as it flew off its stand. She woke up on the floor, Johnson said.

But besides an impressive shiner and what she described as “a dull headache,” Thompson showed no outward symptoms of trouble until the next afternoon, and refused her daughter’s entreaties she go to the hospital to be checked out, Johnson said.

Family members were monitoring her, and all appeared fine until about 36 hours later, when Johnson’s brother, Aaron, had arrived from Rocklin and their mother’s speech began to slow and, soon, she was disoriented.

Thompson, who still needed convincing, was in the shower preparing to go to the hospital when she collapsed. A short time later, a seizure “started the rest of it,” Johnson said.

Taken by ambulance to Queen of the Valley Hospital, Thompson was found to have bleeding in her brain that caused neurological damage. There were slight ups and downs over the next 10 days, despite what Johnson called “amazing” care at the hospital.

It was clear Thompson would suffer permanent effects, Johnson said, though no one knew “exactly what that would look like” until last week, when she and her brother found themselves faced with decisions about feeding tubes and breathing machines.

Then Friday morning, a sudden hemorrhage ended Thompson’s life.

“Just a few minutes, and it was done,” Johnson said.

Johnson, whose family lives in a 100-year-old home near hard-hit downtown Napa, had considered it a blessing that she, her husband and two kids were in Pleasanton for a soccer tournament when the recent shaker struck, causing an estimated $400 million in damage countywide, officials said.

Johnson had endured a magnitude-5.1 quake in the year 2000 and knew how disruptive and damaging the larger quake would be. Texts and voice mails exchanged as Johnson and her family prepared to return to Napa indicated her mother, at least, had come through it all right.

But once in the car, Johnson learned her mother had been hit in the head and suffered a black eye, and she began urging her to seek medical attention. When she got back to town and took a friend with a medical background to see Thompson, they again suggested she get an evaluation, but Thompson wouldn’t budge.

As Johnson helped friends and neighbors and dealt with damage at her glass business, she asked her brother to come to Napa to help monitor their mother to make sure all was well.?Now, Johnson says, she wishes she’d forced the issue of getting to a doctor. Even once it was clear Thompson was unwell, her mother continued to crack jokes and defy the impression of being injured. “That’s how deceiving these flipping brain injuries are,” she said.

“My sole motivation is that something good comes from this,” Johnson said. “My mom would want to turn something negative into a positive. That’s who she was. That’s the way she rolled.”

“She was an amazing mom. She was the favorite aunt. She was goofy as hell, and she brought a lot to life,” she said.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at  521-5249 or mary.?callahan@pressdemocrat.com.