Amanda's Brain Aneurysm Recovery Fund

On November 19th, 2019, Amanda was taken to the hospital by ambulance and underwent emergency surgery for a ruptured brain aneurysm. Ruptured brain aneurysms are often fatal, with about one in three victims not surviving the initial brain trauma; Amanda miraculously made it to the hospital in time and survived life-saving brain surgery. She has been in the ICU in a coma since the surgery. She has been making steady, gradual improvements, but her doctors say that recovery will take months and possibly years.

For those who don't already know Amanda, she is an overwhelming force for good in the world: intelligent, creative, humble, and resourceful are but a few ways that her friends are proud to describe her. In her professional life, she is an extremely talented classical bass player, performing with dozens of ensembles including the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Grand Rapids Symphony, the Rochester Philharmonic, and the Pittsburgh Opera. She is a founding member of the Kassia Ensemble, a Pittsburgh-based group that highlights compositions by female composers, offering educational programs to children and delivering chamber music performances all over the continent.

Amanda has worked hard to build a successful and varied musical career, working part-time as a cheesemonger to supplement the variable income of a freelance musician. After years of careful saving, she and her partner Bryan were able to buy a house together in August of this year. The timing of Amanda’s aneurysm makes this situation all the more tragic, as the related medical costs and extremely long rehabilitation period put the new home and Amanda’s entire way of life in jeopardy. Fortunately, Amanda has health insurance, but on top of her copays and deductibles, her doctors predict she will need many months to years of recovery before she can work again. A medical emergency like an aneurysm is a horrific and shocking event for anyone, but it places a unique financial burden on a young person like Amanda, whose career as a classical bassist offers no paid time off and requires fine motor skills that may take years of careful rehabilitation to recover—if they ever recover at all.

Amanda has already undergone several expensive, life-saving procedures, and will likely need many more. Once she has regained consciousness and begins to recover further, she will need physical and occupational rehabilitation just to walk and talk again, much less to return to her work as a cheesemonger and, ultimately, a bassist. It is our hope to provide Amanda with the time and resources that she will need on her road to physical recovery and, hopefully, the road back to work as a professional musician.  This process will require the re-building of muscle memory and the precise, highly refined coordination skills that a musician uses every day. Please help us raise money to support her during her long recovery and to assist with her medical costs.