Sending Love To Jenna

It takes a special person to be a teacher and a spectacular person to be a single foster parent. Jenna Burger handles both with a smile and never expects anything in return. She is an incredible young lady that has had an unexpected hurdle thrown her way.

On Tuesday, November 22, 2022, a couple of days before Thanksgiving, Jenna had spent a previous couple of days in the hospital with her foster son, who had a kidney infection. She returned to school and spent the day teaching her 5th-grade class in Sabetha, Kansas. As the afternoon turned from school into Thanksgiving break, she went from the local clinic to the emergency room, being placed on a ventilator to being life-flighted to KU Med in hours. Thank God for the fantastic medical personnel that helped her get to the right place for proper treatment for an illness that found her fighting for her life with bacterial meningitis.

She was admitted to the ICU, and during the first several hours at KUMC, she underwent a CT scan, MRI, lumbar puncture, and countless lab tests to determine how best to care for and treat her. Thanksgiving this year for the Burger family was spent in a hospital, hoping Jenna would wake up.

After a few days, with some excellent hospital care and lots of prayers from family and friends, Jenna was able to come off the ventilator and has been able to talk to family and face-time her kids. However, she faces a challenging recovery to return to her home, return to work, and re-establish a loving foster home for her kids. She was dismissed from the hospital to stay with her parents to regain her strength and have help with the kids and home IV therapy.

As we have watched from afar this week, saying a prayer for the family, we wanted to turn the sense of “how can we help?” into doing a little something extra for Jenna as we celebrate her healing. Jenna will have to pay for her medical deductible, additional uncovered medical expenses, dog boarding for her Poodles, and a slow return to work as she rebuilds her strength and gives her body a chance to heal. We hope to build a little nest egg to help cover deductibles, medical bills, and boarding fees for her dogs, as she won’t be able to return home alone for a period.

If you feel you could donate a few dollars, we can all pool our funds together to make a difference. We love you, Jenna, and we are here for you as your body takes time to recover.