Jean Marie Husted

As many of you know, our friend Jean Marie has endured a seemingly endless string of

health problems related to juvenile diabetes since her teens. For 45 years, she has

weathered injections, infections, toe amputations, kidney failure requiring dialysis, a

double organ transplant, a shattered ankle, and too many surgeries to count.

She has faced so many obstacles and overcome them, each time getting buffeted by

serious illnesses and injuries that any one of us would find debilitating, and each time,

picking herself back up and recovering.

But what is truly incredible is that, through it all, Jean keeps her exuberant, positive

spirit. She somehow finds the strength to take teaching jobs and hold her family

together, including being primary caretaker for her mom. I’m continually stunned,

humbled and inspired by my friend’s physical stamina and emotional resilience, her

hope and courage, her capacity for empathy and humor, and the amount of love in her

heart.

Jean is now confronted with an unspeakable decision. For a few years, a past broken

ankle has been deteriorating and becoming more painful over time. She was recently

diagnosed with Charcot foot, a rare complication of diabetes-related neuropathy that

causes the bones in the foot to twist and collapse, leading to deformation of the foot and

a high risk of life-threatening infection. It is extremely painful, and the treatment is

amputation.

There is an alternative to surgical removal of the foot; Jean is a candidate for a

remarkable new technology called ExoSym, essentially a hybrid prosthetic-orthotic

device custom-made to fit her foot shape and offer alignment, positioning, and control to

allow Jean to walk pain-free. Developed for injured military service members as a way

to avoid amputations, Jean has undergone the initial evaluation and fitting, and the

initial tryout of a mockup of her device was a huge success. She was able to walk

confidently, with good balance and an even stride, and all pain-free. Her thoughts on the

ExoSym device? “It’s heaven.”

Now for the challenge: the ExoSym is about $10,000 for the device, not including the

cost of required six months of intense training and adjustment sessions, and insurance

will not cover it. Jean is working, but she has not built up much in savings since her

2019 double kidney-pancreas transplant surgery and follow-up procedures. She’s had

multiple infections and stomach problems that have kept her from working full-time. We are asking

her network of friends, colleagues, and shared communities for $10,000 by Nov. 16 to allow Jean to move forward with her treatment. We need to act fast

because the damage from the Charcot foot will only worsen and lessen her chances of

qualifying for the ExoSym.

Let this be one obstacle we all overcome together, one burden of so many to

collectively lift off Jean’s shoulders, one reverberation of the love and laughter, bravery

and compassion that we learned from Jean.