Your Fellow Airman, Friend and Family...

Hi, my name is Juli, and I am Ryan's mom. Ryan is an outgoing person and the life of the party...

That is until he fell while on the job as a Neurophysiologist over 2+ years ago and suffered severe head trauma. From that point forward, he has spent the next 1.5 years trying to get a diagnosis, spending countless times in the various ERs during the COVID pandemic and recently trying to get a diagnosis for his various symptoms which ranged from debilitating headaches, constant pain and pressure in his head, speech impediment, distorted vision, violent tremors, and constant falls all associated from this original fall. Through all of this though, he managed to continue to work at a job he loves, but it took every ounce of energy to do it and has caused his quality of life to be nil! He finally found a neurosurgeon who could give him a diagnosis, but due to his health insurance, he had to do various treatments before they would authorize surgery. He had spent an agonizing 6+ months in treatment ranging from Physical Therapy, Botox injections, and the like, and was finally given the authorization to have surgery on April 14th of this year. As a family, we all rallied around him hoping this surgery would bring back the Ryan we all knew and loved, but he spent that following month continuously calling the surgeon's office informing them that something wasn't right and went to the ER at least twice during this timeframe and finally at his 1-month follow-up, they realized he had a severe infection.

So, on May 13th they performed emergency surgery (his second) and found an internal abscess where the hardware had been placed in his neck and infection radiating down his spine. They did a thorough cleaning of the infection and sent slides of the infection to Infectious Disease to get an idea of how/what to treat it. Ryan was discharged 4 days later with a Picc Line for the antibiotic treatments he would be doing for the next 6-8 weeks. On June 2nd, Ryan was readmitted for another emergency surgery, his 3rd surgery, this one having to remove the original hardware as it was once again severely infected. He will have to have at least one more surgery to have new hardware placed back into his cervical spine to stabilize his neck, but that will be a good 6-8 weeks from now as they are hoping the infection will finally respond to treatment.

You may ask… so why ask for donations, and that is because Ryan will be out of work probably for the rest of the Summer and most likely into early Fall (which he did not plan on) and he has been out of work since his first surgery on April 14th. He is still waiting for his short-term disability payments to arrive, and in the meantime he has been without a paycheck since that date, living off what savings he had and we have no idea when his disability payments might arrive, and therefore, I am hoping that by of the kindness of your hearts, you can help my son stay afloat, so that he can focus on the healing his body seriously needs, and not the stresses of finances during this time. I fully understand times are tough and finances are even tighter, but any amount would be greatly appreciated!

On behalf of Ryan and his girls, I thank you so much!