Helping Joanne Podlena and Family

Wow! How do we describe Joanne Podlena?! She is a beautiful, vivacious girl with an individual retro sense of style, and a love of red lipstick! She is the kind of person who is always interested in you - she believes in building people up, giving compliments and support. She is incredibly compassionate and non-judgemental, and loves to defend the underdog and the disadvantaged. She is so much fun to be around, and her smile lights up the room. A large group of her high school friends were looking forward to seeing Joanne for the annual Christmas catchup the following week, when without warning on the 27th of November 2016 Joanne collapsed at home in front of her children and husband. Her 12 year old son called an ambulance, whilst his father helped Joanne to start breathing again.

Joanne was rushed to hospital, and whilst receiving a scan she had an aneurysm burst resulting in a large bleed into her brain. Joanne required neurosurgery to clip a major artery in her brain. Since then she has had two incidences of vasospasm, which is constriction of the blood vessels in the brain. At this stage, Joanne is in intensive care, and is still in a critical phase of recovery. Joanne has shown some positive signs of responsiveness to various stimuli, but it is too early to tell what the lasting impact of these events will be on Joanne's future. She will undoubtedly require a lot of rehabilitation in the form of physiotherapy and speech therapy over the coming months.

Joanne is a compassionate teacher who worked with distance education students, many of whom needed additional support due to medical, social, emotional, or language issues. During her recovery, Joanne's family will be without her income. It is undetermined when Joanne will be able to return to work. 

Joanne and her husband John have two sons. Joanne loves her boys to bits - they are her world. Her youngest son is 11 and has low functioning autism. His care is all-consuming and he needs constant supervision. He requires weekly ABA therapy which is very expensive, and because of the family situation will need respite care over the upcoming school holidays. Respite care for children with autism is also prohibitively expensive.

Joanne's friends and family would like to assist John and Joanne through this challenging time with funds to assist their son with the care that his mother cannot provide during her recovery, and also to subsidise the therapies that will aid Joanne's rehabilitation.

Please dig into your pockets if you can: $5, $10, $20 or whatever you can afford will be much appreciated. Any funds go directly into Joanne's son's bank account.

Joanne's husband John and her family are so grateful for every assistance.