Note: If you are viewing this in Microsoft Edge, you may have difficulties with the formatting. Please use a different browser - eg, Chrome, Firefox, for proper formatting of the text. GoFundMe is working on this issue, but it has still not been fixed as of November 22nd.
***
In an instant, everything changed for Germaine Connolly: On the evening of August 9th, she was standing in front of her garage on State Highway 80 in Springfield Center, a hamlet in northern Otsego County in central New York State, a few miles from the fabled village of Cooperstown. Suddenly, a car rounded the sharp turn a few hundred yards north of where she was standing; instead of passing safely by her, however, the car veered off the pavement and struck Germaine nearly head-on, throwing her up onto the hood where she nearly smashed through the windshield before being brutally thrown into a guardrail, and, finally ,the pavement.
She nearly died.
Some say she SHOULD have died, given her horrific injuries: A broken right leg, broken left ankle, broken right arm, broken pelvis, nearly every rib in her body fractured, and a serious head injury that left her unconscious and brain-damaged. Germaine was rushed to nearby Bassett Hospital in Cooperstown and, given the extent of her injuries, immediately air-lifted to Albany Medical Center, where she underwent surgery and spent the next five weeks in the Intensive Care Unit.
In late September Germaine was transferred to the Northeast Center for Rehabilitation and Brain Injury in Lake Katrine, NY, about 50 miles south of Albany, NY. She has a very long road to recovery that will be measured in months, if not years. Her future recovery is marked with uncertainty, but one thing is certain: Her care is costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, with no end in sight. While she has health insurance, and efforts are being made to hold the driver accountable, her expenses are daunting, and the burden of caring for, and watching over her, has fallen on a brother who lives in South Carolina. Since the accident, he has spent several weeks away from his business (self-employed) to be in New York with her, which is taking a toll not only on his livelihood, but on his own health. Since Germaine has no family that lives closer, brother Michael has chosen to be that family lifeline for her.
Germaine retired two years ago from the US Food and Drug Administration, where she worked for many years testing and approving drugs for animals for safety and efficacy. Germaine's vocation was veterinary medicine, but her avocations were arts and literature and music, and just reveling in the magic of nature. She loves to play the harp (and, of course, owns one), and is an avid theater-goer - the more arcane, esoteric, and fringe, the better. In retirement, she was cultivating a love of painting, and had proudly exhibited some of her paintings at a juried art show at the Cooperstown Library in May.
At home, and at a piece of wooded property she calls "The Haven", Germaine took special delight in nature, encouraging amphibians by digging out vernal pools for them to breed in, opening up the tree canopy for fresh growth to encourage animal life, and planting all manner of bulbs and plants wherever she could. Her property became a palette of nature's colors, textures, and smells.
After visiting and spending time in Maine earlier this year, Germaine had realized that this was the place that called to her in retirement; she found and purchased a home there, closing on the property shortly before the accident, and was in the process of selling her home in Springfield Center. The move would have taken place in September, but now the future is on hold, and occluded.
Donations will go directly for the care of Germaine and to help defray the expenses that brother Michael has sustained in caring for her while in New York, such as transportation and housing (hotels). As you can also imagine, health insurance doesn't, and will not, begin to cover the myriad of expenses that a catastrophic accident brings, so even as Germaine's future remains uncertain, you can at least ease the financial burden that she and her brother are facing as the healing begins.