Soon she was trying to pull out her breathing tube. Her right side was weak at first, but by the time she left the hospital six days after the injury, she was fine. Doctors feared she would suffer seizures, but she has yet to have one and the danger lessens as time goes by. She's bilingual, her language development apparently not harmed by the bullet in her brain. She dances skillfully, with nimble hands and feet moving in the patterns of the hula.
Advanced tests show no vision problems.
Obana says Kamalani was lucky that damage was limited to one part of her brain. The bullet did not injure the optic nerve, cause a major hemorrhage, or travel very deep into the brain. Though police still don't know who fired the bullet or where it came from, they surmise it traveled some distance because it was moving at a relatively low velocity when it struck Kamalani. Kamalani also was lucky because she was very young. A child's brain is much more plastic, or pliable.