She came home from her mission in September, and was home in Merida, Mexico, for a few months.
In February, she came to Utah to visit. I always dreamed we'd be friends, but now it was really happening!
Last weekend, while playing games up Provo Canyon, Tere climbed a particularly tall tree. It wasn't the first tree she had climbed in her life.... she was actually pretty good. Unfortunately, this tree was old, and dry, and kind of dead.
While she was climbing out on a limb about 15 feet high, she rested her weight on a small branch. It broke, and Tere fell.
The first thing that happened was that her face hit the branch she was on. She fell 15 feet and landed on the back of her neck, slamming the rest of her body down. After being assessed on the scene, it was decided that she would need to be life-flighted out of the canyon. A few men went and cleared a nearby meadow so that the helicopter could land.
Over the next 48 hours, she had scans, tests, and 3 different surgeries. It was determined that she had crushed a vertabrate so completely it had entered her spinal column. The vertabrate above it was dislocated. They operated and placed steel plates and rods in her back. Her bones surrounding her eye were fractured, and the muscles torn, so they repaired those. She also had broken ribs, so she had tubes placed on either side of her body to drain the fluid from her lungs.
The doctors are expecting that she will never walk again. She has full upper-body function, but her legs are no longer functioning normally.
Now, this sounds like a sad thing. And in some ways, it is. But in other ways, it's not. Tere is strong, and happy, and well. She is recuperating quickly, and has many visitors.
The only problem is that she has no medical insurance.
So her sister and her brother-in-law are setting up a donation account in her name, to try and gather some money to cover the costs. And so yes, I am going to ask you for money. Not today, maybe not tomorrow, but sometime this week. And I am pleading with you to give just a little bit. Maybe a dollar. You don't think it will make a difference, but it will.
I will be posting how to donate later this week. And I ask you to consider donating. This is an amazing woman who will never walk again. She has enough to go through without the crushing weight this debt is going to place on herself and her family.
If you choose not to donate, I will still like you :). But please, consider donating.
