Pam and Nick Mitchell Stroke Recovery & Rehabilitation Fund
Donation protected
I approach this request for help with great humility and hesitation.
Pam's story is below, but I would like to say something before I get into the details of what has happened to her, and her current status.
A previous GoFundMe campaign that I had nothing to do with has helped us more than I can put into words. The truly astonishing amount of love and support from every person that donated to that campaign, combined with the same level of love and support from close friends, The Dublin Pub, and the Dayton Firefighters, has been our only source of income to pay our basic bills each month, allowing me to be with Pam every single day throughout all of this. It's been almost 4 months already, and we have many more months to go before she can return home.
Many of you are aware that my wife Pam suffered a massive stroke and brain hemorrhage (Spontaneous Subdural Hematoma) on Christmas Eve, 2023. She did not make it through her emergency surgery on Christmas Eve morning because they could not stop her bleeding.
After 7 hours of myself and our children Jess and Nick Jr. waiting in the surgical waiting room at Kettering Health Main Campus (Kettering, Ohio), the surgeon came out to tell us the bad news, that she had fully coded (cardiac arrest, full coma), and that we should prepare for the unthinkable.
Later in the day on Christmas Eve, the doctor came to us in ICU and said that they had been giving her platelets and other blood coagulants, and that her levels had finally come up to the lowest level of "normal", and that he was willing to try one more *very* risky surgery if we were agreeable to it. I instantly signed off on it, she made it through the surgery, and was revived from her comatose state.
As I write this, it is 117 days later. Pam has survived 5 very risky brain surgeries, sepsis, pneumonia and countless other infections, spanning 5 different hospital facilities in three cities.
Throughout all of this, she has miraculously bounced back from every surgery and infection with her mind fully aware and in tact, and her physical abilities and mobility displaying every indication that she can and will recover from all of this, and eventually achieve a very good quality of life. It's just going to take a very long time.
She was on that exact path when after 66 days in Kettering ICU, she was discharged in early February, 2024 to an Acute Care rehab facility in the Dayton area. She was standing and stepping into a chair, responding to meaningful physical therapy every day; eating and drinking, and she was about one week away from having her tracheostomy removed.
The established path for someone in Pam's position is to spend about a month in an Acute Care facility until her tracheostomy is removed, and she no longer requires intensive medical attention.
From that point, patients move forward to an Inpatient Rehab facility to build strength, enduring at least 3 hours per day of intense physical therapy, until they are deemed fit to return home with the assistance of daily professional home care.
Returning home also requires a very significant amount of structural/safety accommodations, like ramps/rails for access into the home, complete remodeling of bathrooms and living spaces, etc.
However, Pam's stay at the local Acute Care facility in Dayton was nothing short of disastrous. Her one and only doctor that was assigned to her only showed up once a day, for about 2 minutes. He refused to allow physical therapy to even get her on the side of the bed for the most basic therapy sessions. He allowed her to lay flat on her back for 23 days, ignoring my pleas to discern or diagnose why her physical and mental status was declining so quickly as each day passed.
During the final 8-10 days at this facility, it was becoming very obvious to all of the nurses that something was going very, very wrong. I finally confronted him very directly and said if she lays here like this for another week, she will never leave this place.
He threw his hands up and yelled at me, and I quote, "There's only so much we can do here!".
He finally relented and called an ambulance to have her transferred right across the river to Miami Valley Neuroscience ICU.
I can't put into words how incredible the team at Miami Valley Neuroscience ICU was. It took them less than 12 hours to determine that she had developed Sepsis, Pneumonia, E. Coli, Candida, and a UTI. They immediately put her on the correct medications, and on the correct path to recover from this life-threatening debacle.
The *very next day*, physical therapy worked with her, got her out of bed, and sat her in a chair in front of the window, the sun covering her face and body and lighting up the entire room. From our view in that room, we were directly facing the exact room across the river where Pam had been lying on her back for 23 days.
The team continued to stay on top of her recovery from the infections, and she received meaningful physical therapy every single day that we were there. We were at Miami Valley for 13 days, and then finally discharged to a facility that came highly recommended to me, Select Specialty Hospital in Columbus.
Which brings me to the reason I have decided to ask for more help.
In spite of the incredible generosity and love from so many people with the previous GoFundMe campaign and a huge benefit for Pam at The Dublin Pub, those funds are very quickly being depleted.
Aside from basic housing/utilities, property and income taxes (we are self employed and pay taxes every year, we don't get tax returns), I am now making daily round trips to Columbus, about an hour and 20 minutes each way, spending at least $225 each week on gas. Almost $1,000 a month on gas over at least the next 4 months is crippling. There are many other new expenses that have materialized with the situation we are now in, but I think you get my point.
I absolutely hate to ask for help, and from the beginning of all of this when Pam had her stroke on Christmas Eve, I *never have* asked for help. So many wonderful and caring people, including so many that we've never met, took it upon themselves to help. I feel shameful to ask for more help.
But the reality is starting to settle in...I have to be with her every single day, it's simply not an option to leave her in Columbus and go back to doing music gigs or any other kind of work at this point, and we still have many months to go. Our lives will certainly never be remotely the same as it was the previous 39 years of us being together every day.
I want to make it very clear, I am not asking ANY of you that have already donated or helped out in any way to do so again. Please, do not do that.
All I am asking is, when you have some free time, please forward or post this GoFundMe link to anyone that might be interested in chipping in a few dollars.
Some good news...Pam has had the best week in months this past week. I post updates on the links below, the same exact update on both sites. She was finally liberated from the ventilator last week, and continues to be very responsive, both cognitively and with physical therapy. She is on the right path, for sure.
With love, respect, humility and hope,
Nick
Organizer
Nick Mitchell
Organizer
Dayton, OH