A woman from northeast Ohio is recovering from her sixth surgery related to injuries from a rock being dropped onto her vehicle from a Pennsylvania overpass. The middle school teacher's skull was crushed in the incident.

Sharon Budd of Lake Township had the surgical procedure about a week before Thanksgiving to remove pieces of plastic in her skull that were protecting her brain but had become contaminated, according to The Repository in Canton, Ohio.

Sharon's husband, Randy Budd, said Sharon was walking, talking and cheery in the initial days after the surgery.

Three days after her hospital release, Sharon celebrated not only Thanksgiving Day but also her 53rd birthday.

"The doctors continue to be amazed of her progress ...On this Thanksgiving Day, which is also Sharon's birthday, we couldn't be more grateful!" Randy wrote in a letter to a local newspaper.

Sharon will need at least two more major surgeries, but her family remains hopeful that doctors and her fighting spirit will help her pull through.

The couple was riding together with their daughter on a road trip to New York July 10 when a 4.6-pound rock smashed through the front window of their car, striking Sharon in the head. The mother-of-four lost her right eye, suffered brain damage and went through extensive rehabilitation therapy in a Danville, Pennsylvania, hospital. Doctors were forced to remove some of her facial bones to ease the pressure caused by brain swelling, Daily Mail reports.

Four young men were charged in the case. According to Seattle Times, one of the men, who agreed to testify under a deal with prosecutors, said that the other defendants and he set out to do some reckless damage that day and laughed as they drove away from the scene after hearing the rock they threw hit a vehicle below the overpass.

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