Jerry's medical bills (motorcycle accident)

Dear friends, family, and acquaintances,

We are starting a GoFundMe campaign for medical bills. Some of you know, but many do not, the Friday before Halloween my husband Jerry Meyers was in a serious motorcycle accident. We have many things to be thankful for today on his 60th birthday, primarily that he is still here to celebrate.

October 28, 2022 was a beautiful evening, and Jerry had been out since late afternoon riding his motorcycle. He was heading to Palm Bay for a fundraiser event for the Richard Phillips Biker Down Fund at The Shack Riverfront. I was home alone and randomly checked the voicemail on my cell phone around 9:30 pm before going to bed. While listening to voicemail my heart stopped as I heard a series of messages from a social worker at the local hospital. She was with Jerry and he was asking her to call me. I knew this almost certainly meant that he had been in an accident but was alive, and simultaneously I was relieved because the alternative would have been the police or sheriff knocking on my door with a very different message.

Our lives were turned upside down that night. Jerry sustained many injuries including broken right ankle, broken left wrist, broken nose, three broken ribs, and broken hip. Additionally, he had several lacerations as well as significant road rash. We are very fortunate that all of his injuries will heal in time, and that he had no brain or spine injuries.

We later learned from the police report that a 15 year old minor was driving her mother's car, unaccompanied , which is against the law in Florida. She pulled out onto US-1 in Palm Bay and just stopped blocking the lane. Jerry was within eyesight of The Shack, and he had to make the split-second decision to lay the bike down and try to roll the other way.

The first six weeks went by in a blur and our main focus was recovery and healing. Jerry was in the hospital for one week and a rehab facility for another week, before finally coming home and starting outpatient therapies since then.

We are 10 weeks out now, and Jerry is on the road to recovery; however, he has not been able to work since the accident, and we are not sure when he will be able to resume his part-time job to the capacity he was before the accident. We are very fortunate to have good health insurance through my job at the VA, which covered a big percentage of the medical expenses; however, we are facing medical bills beyond our medical coverage.

We enlisted Brad Sincalir of Sinclair Law Offices and they were a tremendous help in navigating and exploring our rights post accident. We learned there is no legal path for an insurance settlement due to the other party not carrying personal injury liability, therefore these bills fall to us.

We were hesitant to put this out there, but are realizing that it is time to face it and ask for help.

PS: Jerry was given the alias Trauma Jolly when he was brought into the ER that night, not knowing how fitting that name was for him. Jerry kept his good humor and positive spirit throughout this ordeal and that alias brought us humor and laughs during the darkest time after the accident.

Jerry's bike at the tow lot

Emergency room the night of the accident

Trauma Jolly, on the mend