Amnesia-wracked woman on her way home to North Carolina

Friday, February 4th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) -- The road home for Mary Joyce Howard is long-- literally and figuratively. After spending the better part of two years as Jane Doe, anamnesia-ridden accident victim in an Oklahoma City nursing home, she was loaded Friday morning into an ambulance and began a1,100-mile journey to North Carolina.

A long-term nursing home is there. So is her family, who said they could not afford to pay her way home after care workersf inally discovered Howard's identity last month. So Dr. Doug Cox and paramedics Dale Easter and Eric Shankles are taking her home for free.

But Cox, an emergency room physician at Integris Grove General Hospital, said Howard's road will go on even after the ambulance reaches its destination Saturday in High Point, N.C. "She'll never reach her prior condition from before the accident," Cox said, as Howard's gurney was being secured in the ambulance hull. "She'll always have problems performing activitiesof daily living."

Howard was struck in a hit-and-run as she walked along Interstate 40 in western Oklahoma in February 1998. Carrying no clues to her identity, she was brought to an Oklahoma City hospital and underwent major brain surgery. She lived in a near vegetative state, saying nothing until July when she said she wanted to be called Joyce instead of Jane.

But she spoke little and was difficult to understand. Earlier attempts to match her fingerprints failed. Her identity was finally unlocked during a recent Presbyterian Hospital stay for pneumonia, when she suddenly remembered her Social Security number.

For the trip home, the Grove hospital donated the ambulance, complete with a television, VCR and a stack of Disney movies that paramedic Shankles said he borrowed from his daughter's collection. "She likes cartoons," Presybterian Hospital technician Jamie Carey said, of Howard. "She'll watch older stuff like Little House on the Prairie, but she really likes cartoons."

Cox and the paramedics won't get paid for their time, but Integris is picking up the $600 bill for gas, food and lodging in addition to wear and tear on the ambulance. Cox said no major stops are planned during the trip and that Howard will get by on soft food and vitamin supplements. "We may make a stop by a Kentucky Fried Chicken or something on the way," Cox said.

Cox said at her best, Howard functions as a 10-year-old child, forming complex sentences and getting around her hospital room without assistance. At her worst, she folds up into the fetal position and fails to acknowledge much of the outside world.

That is how she looked when she was rolled out of the hospital and into a cluster of reporters Friday morning. Clutching a black teddy bear and running her fingers along her mouth, she nodded absently to a few questions before she was put in the ambulance and driven toward whatever lies ahead.

Even though he said he sees difficult times in Howard's future, Cox said he is glad to have played a role in getting her back home. "One of the reasons I went into this business was to help people," Cox said. "People at the hospital have that same attitude and wanted to help and fortunately we have the manpower to spare and the ambulance to do that."