04 Apr Paying It Forward
Around this time last year, my family was in a very difficult spot in life, it got so stressful at times I had to constantly remind myself to breathe, to actually sit and breathe air in and out of my lungs. My mother in law had recently passed away, my husband had his first job offer in three years unexpectedly snatched from him with no explanation and we were consulting with various surgeons across the country gathering opinions for my son’s upcoming orthopedic surgery. To make matters worse we were working with multiple lawyers to convince our abusive landlords to hold off on the $250 rent increase they had delivered to us with our new lease, only nine months after we had moved into the apartment. With all of this uncertainty and trauma circling around our heads we were able to draw strength from our community to make the decisions that were best for our family and we more than survived, we thrived.
One of the results of a traumatic brain injury is the inability to regulate your balance and stay on your feet. On a short walk from one room to another Stephanie has to stop to be sure the blood is pumping the oxygen her brain desperately needs.
So after I finished my first hour-plus long conversation with Stephanie Reinish on the phone I knew I had to figure out a way I could help her, even a little bit, through this difficult time, as a way of paying it forward for all of the friends, family, and organizations that got us through 2018. In her previous life, Stephanie was an award-winning kindergarten teacher for 18 years who threw herself into her classroom the only way she knew how with every inch of her being. However she was hit, awful pun intended, with an unfortunate series of car accidents beginning 6 years ago, that left her with a serious brain stem injury that forced her to step away from her classroom. For years now her schedule has been filled with cognitive therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and vestibular therapy, as she’s worn a clear path from her mom’s house in Deerfield to the Shirley Ryan Ability Lab’s North Shore location (formerly the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago-RIC). Part of the reason our phone conversation took so long was that you can hear Stephanie reaching for the words with each sentence. One of the results of her brain injury was her complete loss of speech and comprehension, and even with years of hard work she often falls a sentence and a half-behind in the middle of a conversation, stuttering to get the words out, her brain working overtime to keep up with every detail. One of my roommates from college had passed her my name and she contacted me about donating photography for her upcoming fundraiser(click here to see it) and after hearing her story I knew that not only did I want to help her by donating my time, I also wanted to share her story with as many people as I could.
Leaning on her mom to get her through the rehabilitation that comes with a traumatic brain injury, Stephanie has responded well to her therapy regimen.
A single woman without any other family to support her through this journey, Stephanie has had to rely solely on her mom, an entrepreneur herself who has worked tirelessly to keep her business going while taking care of her daughter, driving her back and forth to therapy, to doctor’s appointments, to specialists all around Chicago, to visits at the Mayo Clinic, all to help her daughter achieve her dream of regaining her independent life. As a mom of a special needs’ child, I’ve had to run this course as well, and I know first-hand the type of sacrifice it takes to get your loved ones on their feet, and what kind of a hit financially that can have on the entire family. The house where Stephanie and her mom are currently living has been foreclosed on, the bank already completed the sale of the Deerfield property to an investor, and Stephanie and Sue have to be out of the house by May 7th, 2019. Which leaves most of the physical work on Sue’s shoulders, a recent cancer survivor herself, who is heading into her busy season as a landscape designer. I know that having to pack up and move our family a second time in eleven months wreaked havoc on Craig and me, and we are both able-bodied people with no physical limitations. I can’t imagine how they are going to get this all done while Stephanie is reliant on a cane and a walker and suffers from a condition that causes her to faint multiple times a day, a result of her traumatic brain injury.
Sitting in her living room surrounded by moving boxes, Stephanie can’t believe that she and her mom have to leave her childhood home in a month.
Currently, Stephanie and Sue are searching for a new home, a rental that would accept their three dogs, and as anyone who’s had dogs knows, they are more like your children than your pets. Louie is Stephanie’s therapy dog, and I’m sure when he’s out in his official red vest, they get a few snickers. I mean, how can a dog that small do any good as a therapy dog, right? It’s not like all twenty-four pounds of him can pick her up when she falls, and she probably can’t lean on him to stand up, but really, it’s a brilliant story. Stephanie’s cognitive therapist instructed Stephanie to get a puppy that she would have to train, the idea being that she would have to not only understand the instructions from the dog trainers, but she’d have to then give those same instructions to little Louie, and be able to convey their meanings to him so he could respond accordingly. It’s an intensive exercise in comprehending and processing the directions from the instructors, and then being able to turn that into clear and communicative speech that Louie could understand. Steph took and failed that class with Louie nine times, but passed on her tenth six-week session. It was a graduation for both of them and that red vest was well earned. And now with Stephanie’s POTS, the condition that causes her fainting spells, Louie can bark and alert Sue when Stephanie has fallen down.
To the outside observer, it’s hard to see how important Louie is or why he’s Stephanie’s therapy dog, but he’s crucial to regaining her independent life.
Stephanie is dedicated to finishing her therapies and treatments, experimenting with various medications to treat the three autoimmune diseases she’s been diagnosed with as a result of her traumatic brain injury, complicated by a total of nine concussions. Her team of doctors and therapists think that after about another year and half of treatment she could be ready to rejoin the workforce, first part-time and then hopefully finding a permanent position. Currently, her medical insurance is through the teacher retirement system which doesn’t cover the specialists, including the therapists, she’s needed to get this far. Because of the financial burden, she’s had to suspend her therapies, for now, pushing her timeline of regaining an independent life further away. I know my family wouldn’t have survived the last seven and a half years without the help of our secondary government assisted insurance, Division of Specialized Care for Children (DSCC), help that we got because of how young Aleck is and where we fall in the tax bracket. How there aren’t more organizations like this to help people like Stephanie Reinish is beyond me and only fuels my fire when talking about what is wrong with our system of health insurance in this country. There is no reason someone like Stephanie should be forced to go broke trying to get herself back on her feet, she shouldn’t have to step away from her therapy and medical routines due to lack of funds, it really is a system designed to keep us down after we’ve been critically hit.
Stephanie and Sue stand in their kitchen, in front of photos of them from their annual spring break trip to Mexico, where Stephanie was heading right before her first car accident and brain injury. They are hoping to make it back there again in the future.
Now for the big question, how can I help this dynamic duo keep moving forward in their progress? For starters, parents of her past Kindergarten students have put together a fundraiser to help her pay for her final year of medical treatment and it’s going to be quite an evening. On April 25, friends and family will be gathering at the Ravinia Green Country Club in Riverwoods, IL, where for a mere $75 they will be entertained by the likes of Chicago’s own Wayne Messmer, Rent’s original cast member Anthony Rapp, and a large line-up of DJ’s, musicians, live artists, while filling their bellies with delicious food, cocktails, and a large array of donated packages for the silent and live auction with auctioneer. And even with all of the financial burdens, Stephanie is facing she is donating a portion of the proceeds to The Brain Association Injury of America and The Brain Association Injury of Illinois. I’ll be donating my services to photograph the event and I really hope to see some familiar faces there. Please click here to purchase tickets, read more about Stephanie’s journey, and check out the details for this fundraiser that has become near and dear to my heart.
Her medical team thinks she needs another year and half of therapy and treatment before she can enter the workforce, but she needs our help to get there.