Letters to the Editor
Editor: Our son, Jonathan, was attending the University of Pittsburgh to become a mechanical engineer when on Feb. 13, 2007 he was involved in a sled-riding accident and crushed the fourth vertebrae in his neck. After an eight-hour surgery and some setbacks, he went to a rehab hospital. He came out of the hospital as a C-4 quadriplegic. This means he is in a motorized wheelchair with movement in his arms, very limited movement in his fingers and no movement in his legs. He returned home to Salem, on June 26, 2007 to recuperate. His family took care of his needs and took him to outpatient therapy three times a week until August of 2008. He then wanted to return to school. Since he had started at Pitt and the accident had actually been on campus, he wanted to return to where he had friends and knew the professors. He made it through his junior year (2008-09) experiencing many problems with nurses and aides coming to help him. He has now returned for his senior year and has just been informed that no agencies in Pennsylvania will accept Ohio Medicaid to pay for his nurses and aides. With one-week notice his nurses and aides stopped coming. He now is paying out of his pocket for a nurse to come to take care of his needs. This is costing him $100 a night or $400 a week. Since his disability check is only $929 a month, where is he supposed to get the rest of the money to pay his nurse and have any money at all to live on? The other nights he has to rely on friends to come and put him in bed and then come back in the morning to get him back into his chair so he can go to his classes. What is wrong with this picture? He very easily could have sat back, felt sorry for himself and lived off the government for the rest of his life. He chose to make the best of it and finish his education, get a job and become a productive member of society. His brain is still functioning very well. In fact he had straight A’s last semester and has a 3.4 grade point average for his first three years of college. We, his parents, do not have the extra money to pay for his nurses and are at a loss as to how we can help him. There needs to be some way for him to get help. We are desperately searching for a way to help our son finish his education. Jan and Janet Duvall Salem