Dear Friends,

As many of you know, a couple of months ago our dear friend Adrian fell at home and broke her 5th and 6th vertebrae in her neck. This resulted in two major surgeries to remove parts of the vertebrae to allow for swelling and to install metal plates to stabilize the remaining vertebrae. Unfortunately, it also made her tetraplegic. This means that she is paralyzed from the waist down and largely unable to use her hands. Adrian recently returned home from a 2-month stint in a rehabilitation facility to try and strengthen her muscles with the goal of hopefully walking again one day. She has been told by doctors that it can take up to 2 years to fully recover from a spinal injury though she will see the most progress in the first year. Since she is only two months into this, there is a long way to go. In the meantime, she's had to go on short-term disability leave from her job at the same time that she is learning it is very expensive to be disabled.

Adrian needs a lot of medical equipment in order to live her life - to get around she needs a power wheelchair, specialized transportation, and a device to move her from place to place. She has to sleep in a hospital bed and needs other adaptive equipment to help her in daily life: a special wheelchair for showering, adaptive utensils for feeding herself, and other equipment for different basic care tasks. She can't type (it is a struggle to even text on her phone) so she needs adaptive devices to simply hold her electronics in place so she can "hunt and peck" at the screen. To use a computer she'll need software to help her have more accurate speech-to-text. Insurance has covered a few of these things but not most of them. Her goal is to walk again and to resume her job as soon as she can. However, she has many months of intensive rehabilitation before that is even a possibility. While she's on short-term disability, she's only receiving about a third of her paycheck every month while expenses have skyrocketed. She needs our help. If you're able to donate any amount to this GoFundMe, it would go a long way to helping Adrian manage her expenses and support herself while she focuses on recovery. I know many of you have sent cards and gift cards and have her in your thoughts and prayers which she also appreciates. Please keep sending all the prayers and love because she's going to need them in the coming months to help keep her spirits up.