Dave & Suzanne G. ----“Save Dave’s Leg Fund”

Our good friends Dave & Suzanne were having a hard time making ends meet when they decided to move to Atlanta from the New York area in winter 2005. They had accrued a fair amount of debt in NY, and they thought the lower cost of living in the South would help them cut spending and repair their credit history.

They found an apartment in Alpharetta and within a few months they each found a job and a daycare for their then-2-year-old son. To further cut down on living expenses, they got rid of one of 2 cars and carpooled with each other for a while. Since they worked in opposite directions, though, it added greatly to both their commutes, so Dave began commuting to his job on a Vespa scooter in August.

Life had almost started to settle down when tragedy struck: in December, 2006, Dave was side-swiped by a 16-year old.

He landed in the hospital for several weeks, lucky to be alive. The right side of his body had been crushed, however, including his shoulder, collarbone, ribs, and leg. Over the next 3 months, his upper body gradually recovered. But his leg, which became dangerously infected within the first few weeks of the accident, has yet to heal. The night of the accident, surgery was performed to pin his leg in place. Five days later, they removed the first pin and put in another to more securely set the leg. When rampant infection was discovered in the wound area at the end of January, he had a third surgery to probe for hidden pockets of infection and to emplace a wound V.A.C. (vacuum-assisted closure) device. Another surgery was performed in July, and another in September, all attempts to mitigate the raging infection that has taken hold in his leg.

Despite continued and aggressive intervention throughout the year, his leg has steadily deteriorated to the point that a specialist recently told him that the only way to save his leg now would be to remove 8 cm of bone between his femur and his tibia, and replace it with a titanium rod, forcing his leg to remain straight while internal antibiotics hopefully clear up the infection. The procedure is called an "arthrodesis". If that works, then in April or May, Dave can get a knee replacement and begin the arduous road to rehabilitation. If not, then the leg may be amputated.

To make matters worse, after nearly 12 months of struggle with the recovery from this accident they are reaching the limits on their health insurance coverage. Their lawyers have told them they have no good way to pursue either the 16-year old’s family or the many doctors involved in his case in the courts. The financial situation has become very desperate. While there are some insurance funds that may eventually be available to pay medical expenses, they could be tied up in litigation for years. Humana and Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Georgia have already served liens notifying Dave and Suzanne that they WILL be seeking reimbursement of all the costs of Dave’s care out of any settlement proceeds, and once they have been reimbursed for the nearly $750,000 in medical bills that have thus far accrued, it is highly likely that these funds will be exhausted long before the need for care has passed. It’s been almost a year since the accident, and so far, Dave and Suzanne’s auto policy has paid only $500 toward the cost of their out-of-pocket expenses.

These are our good friends. They are wonderful, generous, loving, funny, smart, cool people. They don’t deserve to be facing such a drastic situation (no one does). They need help with the cost of everything right now – especially the cost for Dave to fly to San Diego where the doctor who can treat him is located, and the cost of his time to stay their during post-operative recovery.

Please make a donation to “Save Dave’s Leg Fund” and help make a difference in the lives of our friends Dave & Suzanne. One hundred percent of your donation will go to the expenses related to this health care emergency. Donations are not tax-deductible.

Here’s a particularly inspiring and eloquent quote from one of Dave’s blogs about the accident:

“I've learned many things since having the accident. I've learned to take my recovery a day at a time - I have great days and awful days. I've learned to plan my recovery and my progress through it not in days or weeks, but in months. Recovering from the kind of trauma I suffered, plus the unfortunate infection that still isn't resolved, takes months. I've learned that my right leg will probably end up 2" shorter than my left one, and that I will never walk the way I used to, although with luck, I will walk unassisted, and if not, then I'll use a cane.

I've learned that society automatically assumes a person is mentally defective if they're in a wheelchair - which has actually been kind of fun to debunk. I've learned that motorcycles are unsafe - not because of the bikes or the riders, most of whom (including myself) are safe, cautious drivers - but because the rest of the vehicles on the road simply do not pay attention to motorcycles, making the riding equation itself unbalanced.

I've learned that my wife, Suzanne, is a kind of a Superwoman, with vast wellsprings of caring, concern, compassion and love as she guides me through one of the stiffest challenges I've yet to face, and advocates fiercely for my well-being with doctors, hospitals, home health agencies, and the world at-large.

I've also learned that bad luck isn't getting caught at the red light, or dropping $50 on the Bears game and losing it, or misplacing one's keys. Bad luck is what happens to you on a Tuesday evening when all you can think about is getting home to be with your lovely wife and beautiful young son to have dinner and spend the evening, and one driver's mistake derails your life in a way you could never have imagined.

Correspondingly, I've also learned that good luck isn't making the light, or winning the football pool, but rather, it is having that wife and son, and health insurance, and the friends who built a ramp for me, or brought casseroles to the house, or watched our son so that Suzanne could wait through my surgery and be there when I awoke, or who simply came to sit by my bedside for half an hour after their own long, challenging day had ended, to help set my mind at ease and give me encouragement, selflessly. That is the kind of good luck that I enjoy, by which I am humbled and for which I am ever thankful.“

- Cari and Chris, Atlanta, GA