Due to the generosity of our Annonymous donor, the $5,000.00 Match has been extended until Macrh 15! We’re halfway to raising the $5,000.00 needed to obtain this wonderful matching opportunity. Please help us raise much needed funds to help with Ross’ recovery. Keep your thoughts and dollars coming!
In an effort to assist the Dolloff family and to aid in Ross’ recovery, we have established a Trust – the Ross M. Dolloff Recovery Fund. The Trust is now established with James Breslauer, as trustee.
Contributions can be made out to the Ross M. Dolloff Recovery Fund and sent to:
Ross M. Dolloff Recovery Fund c/o Jim Breslauer
130 Poor Farm Road
Harvard, MA 01451-1239
Funds sent will be deposited within 2 days.
Anyone interested in contributing stocks, bonds or real estate should contact Jim.
getwellross
Match update
Folks, with slightly under 2 weeks to go we need less than $1000 to meet the $10,000 match. The outpouring of support to meet this match is fantastic. I know with all of your help we WILL make it. As soon as we do I will let you know. This means so much to Ross and his family and gives us much more flexibility in what services they can access to help Ross’ recovery. Thanks so much for all your support.
Jim
Match Made!
Thanks to all we have reached the full $10,000 match. If you have read Care’s recent post, you will know that Ross will, hopefully, soon be leaving Ledgewood and moving into an apartment. The Recovery Fund will be used to pay for outpatient services at the apartment and for various other expenses incurred to allow him to live independently. We expect these expenses to be substantial.
We are currently negotiating with another donor for a February match. Stay tuned for an update.
I visited Ross yesterday and talked to him while he walked down the hall. As Care said, this is really inspiring. He is working incredibly hard and painful progress is being made. He is amazing. (but you know that).
Good news – yesterday I saw Ross walk down the hall way at the nursing home!! His therapist was with him but really not helping him that much. It took so much effort on his part and he sweated bullets – but he did it. He had to take the wheelchair back to his room as he was exhausted but he did it! He is so determined. So I wanted to be sure I shared this with all of you. Your comments, thoughts, visits, and well wishes have truly inspired him. Our family has been touched by the outflowing of support.
We are now looking ahead a bit to when Ross can move out of the nursing home. We are looking at an apartment in East Boston that a friend of ours lived in (who now lives upstairs on the 4th floor), and working with the landlord to see if he can make it handicapped accessible (hoping that it all works out for us). In the meantime we are sorting and doing a lot of tossing out at our house in Exeter in anticipation of a move.
Ross continues to read your cards and blog comments and it keeps him going. In addition the visits by friends is an amazing bonus. Thank you all for your support – it will allow us to get Ross the therapy and equipment he needs to continue to improve. He really has done amazing work!
Thank you all!
Care
Ross:
Oh Frabjous Day! Callou Callay!!!! I am reduced, in my elation, to using Lewis Carroll’s celebratory language from “Through the Looking Glass” to celebrate this major, significant, happy and glorious news. (I am sure that your life feels a bit like Carrolls’ Alice from time to time) Nothing the English language offers adequately celebrates your recent walk down the hall. Those steps are freedom and will only become easier from this point forward.
Now, you must learn how to fall and how to get up. No easy tasks, those. Seriously, those were my next steps in recovery. I would jokingly tell my wife, family and friends that my brain allotted a certain number of steps per day, say 250. I would struggle but was fine till I reached 251 when my leg would collapse and I would go down. So the test each day was to determine how many steps my brain was allowing me to have. I drew great comfort when my experiments showed me that the number increased.
Weakness from atrophy can be profound and it takes a lot of work, as you know, to rebuild a body that still struggles to get its’ neurons firing correctly. I lost 24 pounds in the 4 days after my brain surgery, all on the right side of my body which became skeletal. (I am still working on rebuilding the muscle mass and becoming fully coordinated.)
I know how hard and exhausting this is for you, but you have just cleared a hurdle that must be celebrated. Maybe it’s time for that beer.
Cares’ message said that you may leave the nursing home and move in to an apartment. When I left the recovery facility and went home, the first thing that I noticed was the lovely silence of which one is deprived when in an institution. Silence can be glorious and, in my mind, therapeutic. It facilitates that drift into the right brain bliss that often follows a left brain injury.
Ross, I am so happy for this day and this news. Keep struggling, We are all pulling for you and can now see a day out there in the future when you will return to your community.
Bill