Woman shot in head
By Lori Tighe
says she has become a
different, better person
Star-BulletinJackie Pflug survived being shot in the head by terrorists and then thrown out of a plane in 1985.
But she became a different person, a better person even, she says. "I learned there was more to life."
She will speak about her recovery at the Pacific Conference on Brain Injury at the Sheraton Waikiki Hotel, tomorrow through Saturday.
Featured issues include community violence prevention, brain injuries from shaken-baby syndrome, the latest in brain injury recovery, and the need for population research on mild brain injuries.
Pflug, 43, of Minneapolis had "wanted to see the world" and accepted a teaching position in Cairo a few months before the tragedy occurred Nov. 23, 1985.
She visited her husband in Athens, Greece, then returned to Cairo on Egypt Air Flight 648. Fifteen minutes into the flight, five Egyptian revolutionaries stood up with guns and grenades. They told the passengers if they cooperated they wouldn't get hurt.
They stopped the plane in Malta and ordered the airport to refuel the plane or they would kill a passenger each 15 minutes. The government refused, and the terrorists chose five passengers to shoot. Pflug was the fifth one. A terrorist pointed a gun to her head, shot her, then threw her on the runway.
"I didn't think I would survive it," she said. "It's that old saying, when it's your turn to go. I needed to go through this to learn my lessons in life."
The old Pflug thought life was about driving the right car and wearing the right clothes, working, eating, sleeping and rising the next morning to do it all again.
"I wasn't listening to my spirit. I wasn't being truthful. I don't think I was living with integrity," Pflug said.
The bullet lodged in the right side of her brain which effects vision, language and memory. She said she is still recovering 13 years later.
Pflug, however, lost her peripheral vision, and she sees in pieces. She can't see a person's whole face, but rather just one eye, and parts of the nose and mouth. She can read very slowly. She also has epileptic seizures and takes medication to control them.
After the tragedy, Pflug got angry, she grieved the person she lost, and finally she forgave her attackers.
"I leaned on God, and I also made a commitment," she said. "I vowed to do whatever it took to put a smile on my face and feel whole again."
She divorced her first husband three years after the shooting and remarried in 1995. She had a son, Tanner, a year ago.
Pflug dictated a book and worked with a writer on "Miles to Go Before I Sleep" about her long journey back. Having to give up teaching, Pflug discovered another path, lecturing about brain injury recovery.
Technology in medicine has made remarkable progress in saving brain-injured victims and reducing permanent damage, said Dr. Gary Okamoto, medical director of the Rehabilitation Hospital of the Pacific and the department of rehabilitation at Queen's Medical Center.
"As much as we are saving people, we also are minimizing the long-term disabilities which is the most challenging frontier," Okamoto said.
"The even bigger challenge is creating a healthier community to prevent brain injuries," he added. "With permanent disabilities in the long run, society really hemorrhages in cost. Preventing them is still the cost-effective way to go."
