Pauletta’s Memorial Fund ❤️‍

Please see the updates for most recent info.

There has been a bunch of chatter about helping mom with some funds to recover. And this recovery road will be pretty long! While she isn’t working and no money is coming in…unfortunately money is still going out! I’m working to get a lot of her bills frozen, paused, or discontinued while she is in the hospital. And I will be using what’s left in her accounts to cover the bare minimum payments until she is runs out. Some suggested trying to raise a little extra to try and cover lost wages for both her and I, transportation costs for family, and to fund a snack/food bank for her and everyone who visits. But mostly any donations will go to bills/expenses for mom while she recovers until she can (hopefully) return to work. Oh, and one of the nurses made a suggestion that we offer Venmo as an option to decrease fees and how much of a cut GoFundMe’s gets! So here is mine and mom’s usernames: @Meagan-Garland and @Pauletta-Garland

The following is shared from same post that was on FB:

So I had been debating for the last few days about posting what’s gone on with my mom. But since she is so awesome and so many people love her, that people have been individually reaching out wanting to know what’s going on, here we go.

A week ago today 3/7 she got up in the morning and about 6am took a shower before she was headed out for work and the doctor’s office. She hadn’t been feeling too good-mostly cold symptoms-so she had a doctor’s appointment before work.

Around 11 or Katlin Coffman started to worry that mom had not shown up to work yet after her appointment and not returned her calls/texts, so she reached out to me and Catie Kessler to see if we had heard from her….but we had not. After trying to reach out to mom, and agreeing that it was super weird that no one can get a hold of her, we both headed to her house. Catie got there like 1 min before me and found her laying on the floor in the bathroom in front of the shower. Her right arm was pinned underneath her, she was completely unable to move, and she was barely conscious. It was all terrifying. And the worst part, she had been laying there for like 6 hours…

She remembers getting out of the shower and drying off and feeling “swoony” as she says, and then being on the floor bouncing in and out of consciousness not able to move. She tried to call out for Siri to call 911, but the phone couldn’t hear her because mom had a towel wrapped around her face.

Matt quickly called 911 and Catie called me, but I was pulling in the driveway. I quickly hulked out and moved all her furniture and rugs in the living room, hallway, and bathroom so they could get in and out as fast as possible. And tried to keep her awake and talking to us. It took us a little while to get her up from the floor because of the position she was in, but eventually she was transported to Mercy Hospital.

CT’s showed she surprisingly had ZERO fractured bones in her body, but she was still unable to feel anything from the neck down. So we waited…and waited…and waited for an MRI. They sent her up to the floor for admission (which was a shit show but that’s another story) and tried to keep her as comfortable as possible. He vitals were awful! She was super bradycardia and hypotensive (low heart rate and low blood pressure) and was not able to control terrible leg spasms that made it looked like she was having some sort of seizure. In order to keep leg spasms a little under control they gave her some pain meds, muscle relaxers, anxiety meds…all the things and nothing was working. What the drugs WERE doing was making her heart even more unstable….

Saturday afternoon 3/9 she finally had an MRI.

Spinal Cord injury with compression at C4, C5, and C6. Her brain couldn’t tell her body how to work, so it wasn’t…

She was transferred to the ICU so they could stabilized her blood pressure and heart rate. This would also give her MUCH better care (still a story for another time) which she desperate needed.

New drug refinement finally got the spasms under control and she was comfortable for the first time since she went to bed Wednesday night. But still unable to move her legs at all, and just barely move her arms.

Sunday-Thursday has been a blur of hospital shifts, updates, family banning together, advocating for mom, changing this drug, changing that drug, taking out the foley catheter, putting it back in, turning her, feeding her, bathing her, making sure she drinks enough, watching her blood pressure like a hawk, talking to a thousand doctors about plans, working with a bunch of not recognized enough nurses, and making sure she gets what she needs when she needs it because she can’t help herself….

Shout out to everyone who has spent any amount of time at in the hospital with her. Especially Alexis Garland, Mallory Sommer, and Michael Middleton. And I know Pam Middleton Strauch is coming! And shout out to Matt, Dani Ruhl, Don Wolfe and Cori Ann for holding down our forts so me and Catie could be there almost every day! We couldn’t have done this without everyone’s help. And let’s not forget Kaitlyn…she basically saved mom’s life with her texts to me and Catie!

Tomorrow (Friday 3/15) is her Spinal Decompression surgery. currently scheduled for 7am!! It should help the nerves freely communicate signals to her body and make healing improvements possible. The Neurosurgeon described it to me as if her spine was you driving on a highway, but there is an impassible concrete median in the middle of the road blocking your path…they will attempt to remove the median and allow traffic to flow on the highway. This should hopefully fix a lot, and stop impeding her body from healing itself.

So all the prayers are welcome, all the good wishes are appreciated, and everyone keep their fingers crossed on both hands

We have a VERY long road of recovery. She basically has to learn how to do EVERYTHING all over again. She had already made small strides in the right direction by getting her appetite back and being able to move her arms a bit more. So we are headed on the up and up already!

Updates after surgery will also be posted and I will keep tagging her in them on FB so all can see!

Again the love and support is greatly appreciated!