Rhonda's Rehabilitation: Help Support Her Recovery

Organizing this for my dad, so I'll let him tell her story:

My name is Wayne and nearly half my life has been spent with the most caring, thoughtful, loving, energetic person I’ve known, my wife Rhonda. We have raised two amazing young men Jack (24) and Daniel (19) who share all of those characteristics as Rhonda. We’ve shared together great summer vacations, days on our boat, and days at the beach. All this changed on May 28, 2024 when Rhonda was found by the side of her car at a park she regularly walks after work. I received the dreaded call that a family member was at the hospital that late afternoon. When I arrived the doctor told me she needed emergency life-saving surgery to relieve pressure on her brain from a bleeding brain tumor that had also caused a stroke.

Rhonda has had six surgeries including two cranioplasties. She spent 56 days in the hospital and is currently in in-patient rehab where she is improving inch by inch. The stroke has left her right side weak and the tumor has affected her speech and cognitive abilities.

Rhonda, only 59 years old, has been a perfusionist for 37 years, working in the cardiovascular operating room, has been clinical teacher of the year twice, and has been to Uzbekistan and Kyrgystan on two separate occasions with Project Open Hearts volunteering her service to provide heart surgeries in disadvantaged countries. She has been a patient advocate, many times talking to families before and after surgeries. She has devoted her life to family and health care.

For someone who has given so much to other people, I feel like this is the moment to give back to her so that she can get access to continued therapy insurance won’t cover, provide modifications to the home for her return, and provide the equipment and tools she may need to bring this beautiful person back to who she is to so many of us.