‘It’s a miracle’: Fort Worth ISD school counselor recovers from 5-week coma, asks for help

Lina Ruiz
·4 min read
2

A middle school counselor in the Fort Worth Independent School District has made a miraculous medical recovery after waking up from a coma that lasted about five weeks. Now, she and her family are asking for help from the community as she faces medical bills and ongoing therapies and treatments.

Lacette Green, an eighth-grade school counselor at Rosemont Middle School, is hoping to return to campus in April or May after she contracted the flu, which turned into pneumonia, and fell into a coma starting Dec. 9, she and her sister, Shay Green, told the Star-Telegram. During that time, she was on a ventilator and also had a tracheostomy tube inserted into her neck to help with breathing. Lacette Green woke up the second week of January and became fully aware of what had happened in early February.

Green has been a counselor at Rosemont for two years and has worked at various Fort Worth ISD campuses for at least 18 years, she said.

“I miss them, and I think they miss me,” Green said of her students, noting that she’s received emails from them asking when she’s returning. “I’m anxious to come back.”

Fort Worth ISD staff and students are on spring break this week, and the Star-Telegram was unable to reach district officials for comment on Green’s absence and pending return.

Moving forward, Green and her family are urging community members to visit the GoFundMe page Shay Green started on Jan. 3, when she explained how Green fell ill and how her family members were unsure how long the situation would last. Five days later, Green’s sister posted an update saying she “is moving her head a great deal, blinking, moving her arm and trying to communicate.” Shay Green plans to update the page with the positive news of Lacette Green’s return home and the assistance that will be needed for the rest of her recovery.

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Although Green’s now able to talk, stand and sit, she’s unable to walk without her oxygen level rapidly declining. Green is currently on oxygen, undergoing dialysis treatment and is in the process of joining a waiting list for a new kidney.

“She’s not really able to walk because her oxygen goes super low when she tries to walk or do anything, but literally, it’s a miracle,” Shay Green said. “During Christmas, it was so somber… She did not look like she was going to make it at all. It looked like it was a wrap.”

Lacette Green, a counselor at Rosemont Middle School in Fort Worth, is pictured in her hospital bed with a tracheostomy tube during her five-week coma. She woke up the second week of January 2024 and is recovering.
Lacette Green, a counselor at Rosemont Middle School in Fort Worth, is pictured in her hospital bed with a tracheostomy tube during her five-week coma. She woke up the second week of January 2024 and is recovering.

The last moment Green remembers is going to the school nurse to have her temperature taken the day before she fell into the coma, she said. Although she was urged to go home after discovering she had a 101-degree fever, Green stayed anyway. She had already missed work for a couple of months after a late August surgery that kept her home until a week before Thanksgiving. After Thanksgiving break, she had only been back at work for another week before her health took a steep turn.

As a result, Green has been off school grounds for a large portion of the 2023-2024 school year. In addition to being away from her students, she was also upset to learn she had missed Christmas and her son’s birthday.

“I’m just really floored that I missed these things,” Green said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

In addition to the holiday and birthday events, Green learned about the death of one of her students that happened during her coma. Devin Baker, 14, was died on Dec. 14 after he was shot by a woman who said she saw Baker attempting to break into her Fort Worth duplex through a bedroom window. The woman, Aleah Wallace, told KDFW-TV in an exclusive interview that she was “devastated” to learn Baker was a teenager and said she reacted out of self-defense. Baker’s mom and stepfather described him as a sweet, fun-loving boy who enjoyed sports, was a good student and had dreams of starting a clothing line that included his personal art.

Green’s GoFundMe page can be reached at: https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-school-counselors-fight-for-life