PITTSBURGH — Channel 11 was there as the survivor of a violent attack reunited with the doctor who saved her life.
Jen Pardini was nearly killed when her ex-boyfriend attacked her with a hammer and left her for dead on a garage floor in 2023.
Reuniting with Pardini is something that Allegheny General Hospital neurosurgeon Dr. Jody Leonardo prayed for ever since she ended up on her operating table after the attack that left her head sliced open.
Dr. Leonardo remembers the day her medical team told her to get back to the hospital because Pardini had opened her eyes.
“I walked into her room, and I nudged you (Pardini), and she opened her eyes and she looked at me and I said ‘Jen, hi!’ and she looked at me, ‘Hi! I’m Jen.’ And I knew in that moment that she was going to be okay.”
Pardini was rushed to AGH in July of 2023, after being left for dead on a garage floor at her parents’ Peter’s Township house. There was immense fear that she wouldn’t live through the night. Doctors at the Level 1 trauma center, where they see it all, were not ready to see this.
“You could hear a pin drop. Everybody was just so impacted by the fact there was somebody young on this table and someone did this to her,” Leonardo said.
Pardini’s brain damage was to the dominant speech center of her brain. After she made it through the night, doctors still feared for her future.
“We didn’t know afterwards if she’d be able to wake up, if she’d be able to communicate, speak, understand. We didn’t know to what extent her brain had been injured,” Leonardo said.
Leonardo says the severity of Pardini’s injuries actually saved her life, since it allowed her brain to swell without killing her.
“Often, people don’t make it to the hospital because their brain can’t decompress without a drain, or a procedure that we do, but because the injuries were so severe, the pressure was able to be released on its own,” Leonardo said.
Pardini’s recovery has been called nothing short of a miracle by doctors, police, family, friends and the DA.
The judge at her ex-boyfriend’s attempted homicide trial called her courageous.
“We can’t change the past. You can deal with it and be depressed for the rest of your life, or you can move forward. And you can take it and you can grow from it,” Pardini said.
Pardini isn’t just defying the odds by walking and talking, she’s now spreading awareness about domestic violence, working to make a difference and show the world that she isn’t letting any of it hold her back.
“Everything Dr. Leonardo and her team has done, I’m lucky. I’m a blessed and lucky girl. I can never say enough how thankful I am, how grateful I am,” she said.
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