From ICU to Recovery: Support My Healing Journey

Hello everyone,

A lot of friends have relied on Go Fund Me posts to get through hard times, including after they’ve been hit with huge medical bills or other life altering events. I never thought that would be me one day. I also never thought I’d get hit by a car during one of my afternoon walks, but it seems life had other plans.

On April 9th, two weeks before my birthday, I was walking by the Publix and Chevron in my North Druid Hills neighborhood—something I’ve done regularly for the past three years. I don’t remember what happened next, because I woke up four days later in a hospital bed having suffered 9 fractured ribs, a broken nose, a broken tooth, a fractured skull, seizure, and intracranial hemorrhage, i.e. my brain’s blood vessels had ruptured and were bleeding. I was lucky to be surrounded while I was in the hospital by my brother Tom, my parents, and my partner Lisa. It also meant a lot to me that several friends of mine came to visit me while I was in the hospital. The show of support from friends and family has kept me moving forward in recovery.

While I was in the ICU, unable to remember who I was or where I was, my brother tracked down the scene of the accident through my phone and obtained the surveillance footage from the nearby Chevron. I haven’t watched it yet, as I’ve heard it’s rough to watch, but it turns out that a car failed to yield before taking a left turn and hit another moving vehicle, which then crashed into me while I was waiting on the sidewalk for the pedestrian light to turn green, and threw me several yards in the air before I landed on my shoulder and head. As I mentioned, I can’t remember the first four days I was in the hospital, and it was nothing short of a miracle that I survived this impact.

Though I am grateful to have survived, still the same person I was before, my recovery has been difficult. In addition to the fact that I am still healing from the serious injuries I mentioned above, I have sensory issues, constant pain and headaches, weakness in several muscles, limited mobility, and I expect I will continue having to do rehab for a while, and my road to a full recovery is going to be long.

But what is stressing me out more than my broken bones and the ringing in my ears are the medical bills that have started piling up on our counter. I spent 10 days in the ICU and 11 more in hospital care. While I’m forever grateful to be alive and back home with my family, we’ve started receiving medical bills which will be over $100,000 and that’s the first hospital, we do not know costs yet for the rehab hospital stay or surgery cost for the tooth that broke. The drivers involved had minimal insurance coverage and no assets to speak of, so, sadly, their insurance won’t come close to covering what’s needed. I had just started a new job, and the timing of this accident could not have been worse.

After thinking about it for a long time and talking to my friends and family, I have decided to start this Go Fund Me for two reasons:

1. To humbly ask for any support, encouragement, or generosity as I recover.

2. To share my story as a reminder of how dangerous reckless drivers can be—and how it affects lives. Driving fast or impatiently often causes accidents and pedestrians and drivers should make sure to not assume that other drivers are driving with the proper awareness and caution.

For those who want to understand what happened, here is a video link to a video set up by a friend. I have not watched it because I fear it may effect my recovery. Trigger Warning - it displays a harmful accident. https://vimeo.com/1082181992

Thank you for reading and for helping however you can.