
Kurtis Usher aka Trauma Pigeon
Hi all. Mary Catherine Waters here :) Most of you know me as Katie. I’d like to first introduce you all to someone so very special to me, my fiancé, Kurtis Taylor Usher. We were initially introduced through a dear friend who set us up on blind date in early 2018. We have been together since, and he is my bestest friend. In January 2020, after discussing marriage and spending the rest of our lives together, I put a ring on it. Seat’s taken! If you live in Richmond VA, have eaten at Dinamo, like bikes (working on, building, riding, anything bike really) if you like to surf, work on cars, if you’ve needed tree work done… well, then you are probably familiar with Kurtis. He is a good, solid dude that will go out of his way to help another. And you know that he is one of the best around. He’s a hard worker, very dependable, a true friend, and an amazing life partner.
Unfortunately, this GoFundMe is not for our wedding. We are going through something that has changed the course of our lives, and it’s been a tough road to navigate thus far. As if life hasn’t been weird and tough enough with the coronavirus pandemic. Now, at this time, I will pass the mic to Kurtis. Here is what he has been going through since June 7th in his own words:
On an ordinary day, I crashed my mountain bike into a tree.
I was riding a trail I had ridden many times before with a close friend of mine. Going over a set of jumps at approximately 20mph I left the trail, and landed back first against the trunk of a tree. It happened in the fraction of a second. It is unknown whether or not the tree jumped out in front of me. I was working as an Arborist at that time, and I am still unsure if the trees took their revenge on me that day. I knew instantly I had broken my spine by the sound I heard resonating crisply, clearly in my skull. I am grateful I did not hit my head or neck. My helmet and bicycle remain unscathed from the incident. It took about 40min for EMS to reach me due to my remote location. During this time it became very real to me that I could no longer feel or move my legs. EMS did a fantastic job of retrieving me from the woods, and taking me to the trauma unit of the ER, at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Health in downtown Richmond, VA. There I met more people than I had ever met in a very short amount of time. After a thorough examination; a few x-rays, MRI and CT scans, I learned that I had fractured 2 vertebrae, fractured 2 ribs, compressed/relocated my spine, and severely compressed my spinal cord. In a situation like this, surgery is required to realign my spinal cord, and hardware must be installed to stabilize the damage the tree and I had done. After a quick 15 hour waiting period, I was in the operating room getting mechanically opened, realigned, and strengthened with 2 titanium rods and 8 screws. The surgery was a success, however, I had damaged my spinal cord into what is known as a “complete spinal cord injury”, as opposed to an incomplete injury: an injury to the spinal cord that retains some sensation and motor function.
My spinal cord injury is complete at the T9 level. I have no sensation or motor function below the umbilical level. My spine is fused with the afore mentioned rods and screws between the T9 and T12 vertebrae (belly button level).
At this point in my new life journey, I had started rehabilitations to become as independent as I can. I started at VCU Health with my occupational and physical therapy. I made good progress in the week and a half I was there. Then they closed that facility at VCU Health down to merge with a brand new Sheltering Arms Institute (SAI) rehabilitation facility, and I was moved there along with everyone that was at VCU.
Everyone said this new facility was going to be amazing, and I was going to love it.
My therapy team was great, however, the nursing staff that did not come from VCU was unfamiliar with patients like me, or spinal cord patients in general. In addition to the mental stress and trauma of losing the mobility of the lower half of my body, I also had to deal with the stress of explaining my situation, and teaching proper care, repeatedly every day to members of the SAI staff that did not come from VCU. I believe this is what most people would call “overwhelmingly asinine”. I realized I needed to not only power through my physical therapy to become as independent as possible, but also to make sure that the treatment of patients was at least on par with what SAI preached it would be, an added stress I should not have had to be burdened with in a care facility. Despite the poor communication and staffing problems this new facility was facing, my therapy team helped me get to a mostly independent level where my release date changed from the 22nd of July, to the 15th. I was excited to leave. My fiancé and I had to have one day of family training, and then prove to the therapy team I could do everything they taught me one last time. I had already ordered my wheelchair, and my home supplies. My close friends had built a ramp for me to roll into my house, the one I walked out of over a month ago to go for a mountain bike ride. Little did I know there was something else brewing.
Five days before my release from inpatient therapy, I took a trip to see my surgeon. There was a concern about the yellow mystery liquid leaking out of my surgical site on my back. After a short assessment of what I thought was a mostly healed wound, I was now going to be readmitted to the hospital. It turns out there was major concern over the drainage, and they needed to open me back up to take a look. They told me the surgery would be “exploratory” and hopefully they wouldn’t have to open up all eight inches of the incision site. Unfortunately, the previous incision was infected and they had to open me all the way back up. After a very thorough removal of dead tissue and a heavy cleaning I was sewn back together again.
I write this now post operation. My release date has been pushed back. I have had to resign from my job as a tree climber/tree care worker due to my accident. I will have to change the entire life path I had worked very hard to set up for my fiancé and myself. I will lose my insurance at the end of July. I have used up all of my paid time off as of late June. I will now apply for Disability, and Medicaid. Keeping my insurance will be too expensive to afford without my previous employer. Hopefully, I will be able to leave the hospital by July 18th and get cleared by the physical therapy team here to go home.
I have been completely independent my entire life, and this life changing experience has been a hard pill to swallow. I have my own personal obstacles to overcome in my future, and I am lucky to have the care and support of my fiancé. She will still have to work full time, and help me care for myself for a short period of adjustment. Now that I have resigned from my job at True Timber Arborists, we have effectively lost half of our income. I am very lucky to have the incredible amount of support from my friends and family, but I cannot lean on them forever. They have their own lives, and the world is currently going through the effects of a global pandemic. I do not know what the future holds, but I hope that if I work hard enough I can get back part of what I lost. Until then, there are so many unknowns and a lengthy transitional phase with no real end date. I will have to adjust many things in my life to fit my new mobility. I expect things to be different, but I also expect that I can adapt and overcome. As of this moment, I do not know which direction to take my life, but I know one day I want to get back to work.
I hope this experience will make me a better person. I also hope that one day people everywhere will start treating each other with more respect and kindness.
Life is very short, and it can change in an instant. If you’re lucky enough to survive that instant, you will find out how well you treated other people by how they treat your new self.
(Below was added to my story on Friday 7 August 2020)
Going forward, our plan for all of the support everyone has given us is to have a financial safety net for the next year. We also have plans to make our house more of a functioning space for a wheelchair user. We are hoping to achieve this with minimal reconstruction of the space as a whole, but as many know small endeavors hold hidden problems. All of the support we receive will help significantly, and will make life a little more functional is this time of disfunction. Thank you all so much. We don’t know what we would do without your support.
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