Dear Friends & Family,

This April 2025, my husband, Adam, and our 18-year-old chosen (aged out foster) child, James, were out for a motorcycle ride, running errands and enjoying a glorious Spring day, when they were hit by a car. One moment of inattention by the other driver devastated our lives. Grace and courage? These two could give lessons! But in spite of their resilience, we desperately need your help.

We are the Lang family: Adam and Myra, our kiddos, Nate, Zach, James, and Scott, and a crew of fuzzy family (we've done scaled, feathered, and...whatever you call enormous hermit crabs...but we're currently limited to furry babies).

Adam was a finance manager, and is a motorcycle enthusiast, a gamer, and a movie geek (Star Wars versus Star Trek? Marvel versus DC? My Bear has enough love for all of them!). I was a legal videographer, teacher, and author.

Our oldest, Nate, works to save for his own little farm. He just wants horses, dogs, and peace. Zach, with his wide smile and easygoing nature, has already started writing, and is learning the hard slog of endless drafts. James is laser-focused on a career as an advocate for homeless youth (and is well on his way at 18!), and he *loves* to bake. Our youngest, Scott, creates the most gorgeous and imaginative art and DnD campaigns you've ever experienced!

The April accident has put all of it in jeopardy.

James has healed physically, though he'll always carry scars, but is being treated for the ongoing issues and trauma the accident has caused emotionally.

Adam's physical injuries and their complications have ravaged his body and mental health.

We are the family that weathers the storms. No matter what we've been through, we come out together. We weathered a near fatal miscarriage in the early months of our marriage. In 2005, we lifted each other through the premature birth, at 27 weeks, of our son, the million dollar baby! We've continued to help him learn to fight his ongoing battles with chronic lung disease of prematurity and epilepsy. In 2009, when the economy tanked and Adam was laid off, we lost everything but each other.

In early 2011, when Adam had a heart attack and quintuple bypass and a week later our oldest son, Nate, had a horseback accident, TBI, and a full craniotomy at a *different* hospital, while I still had a nursing toddler at home!...you wouldn't believe how we rallied around each other!

We fought hard that year of recovery so that I could finally attend law school at 40, uprooting our lives and household to move across the country--and then having to come home halfway through year 2 to help care for my ailing mother. That's okay! Family pivots together. We pivoted!

Adam worked hard. He established himself at work, made a good living, and was so proud after that 2009 crash and the 2011 crises that he was suddenly in a position to help pay my mom's bills and ease some of her burden in her final years.

And if a career in law wasn't in the cards, I flipped to making my other childhood dream, writing, come true. My pen name alter ego, Kate Corcino, is everything little Myra dreamed of.

But life has its own rhythms and flows, so we rode other challenges that hurt our stability: hit-and-run car accidents, diagnoses of severe autoimmune disorders that left me hospitalized and disabled, Adam's repeated battles with and loss of toes on both feet to MRSA. It's also attacked his heart twice. Twice! Heart issues? MRSA? Pshaw. Can't keep this Bear down! Can't keep this family down!

That's what we thought.

On Sunday, April 13, 2025, Adam and James decided to take advantage of the beautiful day and a forgotten dinner ingredient to head to the store by motorcycle.

They never got out of our neighborhood. While passing our local park just blocks from our house, a young woman changed lanes on top of them, smashing into them and sending them crashing and skidding across the road. All Adam remembers is James screaming in pain. Adam told EMS over and over, "Just take care of my baby. Take care of my baby."

But it was Adam whose life was in danger. At Memorial Hospital, they discovered not only did he have multiple broken bones, but he had a pneumothorax. And with a defibrillator implanted in his chest, he couldn't have an MRI until a tech could get to the hospital to turn it off. Unable to reach the company, the doctors decided to life flight him to University Medical Center in El Paso, Texas, around 50 miles away.

The teams at UMC provided such wonderful care! We've been impressed and grateful every step of the way! Adam had multiple breaks, front and back, to nine ribs, plus the pneumothorax. He broke the bones in his left arm around the shoulder implant from a previous car accident. He broke his shoulder blade. There was damage to his back, side, hip, arms and legs. The road rash was gruesome. UMC implanted plates across his ribs to stabilize the free-floating fractures, got him back on his feet, and shipped off to rehab to do the hard work of recovery. Sounds like a breeze? ;) It took living in the hospital through April and May, but he did it!

Adam jumped in with both feet. When he finally came home in early June, we thought all was well. Another storm weathered! High fives all around!

Instead, it was the start of the Summer of Doom.

Instead of continuing to recover, Adam plateaued. And then his legs started moving without him.

It's called Dystonia, and it's a nightmare of uncontrollable, unstoppable muscle contractions. It started as "restless legs" while he slept. And then they'd raise off the bed and crash down, waking us both. By the end of June, his legs would completely lift, jerk, and curl up over his waist. By mid-July, his arms were involved--one swishing and jerking across his chest and the other swinging out wildly. Adam described it as having a charlie horse all over your body, every few minutes. Until it became twice a minute. And then on top of each other. By the end of July, when he'd been without more than an hour or two of sleep a night for weeks because of the movement and pain, his neck started jerking his head to one side and causing guttural sounds form his throat. And he began falling, collecting bloody injuries that required more trips to the ER.

During this time, we'd tried to get answers. Adam was back at work, and they were getting concerned. We were concerned. On July 28, Adam had been without sleep for three days when he collapsed. Our local hospital had no clue what was going on, but saw it was affecting his heart. They got him stable and sent him home. Three days later, we were back. With no neurologist available, it was the same story again. Treat the symptoms. Get him stable. Send him home.

When he was in desperate pain and exhaustion yet *again* three days after that, we decided to travel to El Paso in hopes of answers.

We had no idea that answers would be in such short supply.

They know he has dystonia, but that's a (terrible) symptom of something larger going on, and they're just not sure what it is. They've ruled some things out; others will take testing that require weeks of waiting for results. They suspect (but cannot yet confirm) that he has a lesion on his spinal cord or brain from the accident that was missed because of the inability to do an initial MRI and the subsequent focus on his lungs, heart, and ribs.

He was meant to have an MRI yesterday. The tech firm that needs to come to the hospital to turn off the implant is short-staffed. His MRI has been pushed to Wednesday of next week.

Any answers that may come from that have also been pushed back. In the meantime, they are struggling to find treatment for the uncontrollable muscle contractions. It feels like playing whack-a-mole with symptoms and possible side effects and current conditions. His doctors and nurses are working valiantly to figure this out!

They told us yesterday that we are likely looking at a long term investigation for a rare condition that may not have many treatment options.

We are lost and increasingly desperate.

Adam lost his job due to his hospitalizations and absences. We've paid our bills this month, but the pantry is emptying. Next month looms. Our savings were long since annihilated by everyone's medical issues.

Now there's no insurance. No income. We're trying to rally, y'all. We're clinging to each other and to hope, as we've always done. I think this time we need more help than we can figure out on our own. I've started the phone calls and gathering paperwork and waiting, waiting, waiting that is applying for disability. We've already received help for bills from community sources in May when he was hospitalized all month, and in our town it's limited to once a year. Food pantries are struggling, too. This seems to be the wrong time to have an emergency in this country (if it was ever the right time).

This GoFundMe campaign will help us patch the immediate gaps of the crisis until we can get longer term help. The money will be used for:

Our goal with this fundraiser is to ensure that Adam can focus on getting the treatment that he needs, find answers, and work on his recovery without the added stress of worrying about losing everything once again, but in our fifties instead of our thirties. Everything raised will go directly to supporting him in his recovery and return to whatever our new normal will be.

Adam has always stepped up to help others, whether that is by reaching out to friends in need or being active in charity work through his clubs or paying bills for others. He's always shouldered the biggest load and worked hard and without complaint to make life better for everyone around him. He never hesitates and never waits, just gets in there to get it done. Now he needs that same energy returned.

No donation is too small. Every penny contributed will make a huge difference to Adam, to our family, and to our hopes of seeing our Bear recovered again, bringing jokes and puns wherever he goes.

Thank you so much for all of the support you've already given us. The prayers, encouraging words, and shoulders to cry on have carried us through the start of this terrible journey. With your help, we will make it through to the end one more time.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Your generosity means the world to us.