Letter to the Editor: DeJoode family wants to thank On With Life, others in Ankeny

October 5, 2010

Five months after the devastating accident that took the lives of our two children, Carson and Claire, and left her with life-altering injuries, my wife, Heather, was finally able to come home last week.

Heather is resting and recuperating at home after being released from On With Life in Ankeny. When Heather entered On With Life, she was admitted to their coma/minimally responsive unit. She would occasionally open her eyes but showed few other signs of consciousness. She spent four months in their post acute, inpatient rehabilitation program. While at On With Life, she received daily, intensive therapies.

Upon discharge, Heather walked out of the building without the use of an assistive device. She will, however, continue to need extensive ongoing physical, occupational and cognitive outpatient therapy.

We are infinitely grateful to the staff at On With Life for their incredible support of our family through this difficult time. Heather will have extensive continuing therapy, but we are grateful for the progress she has made and attribute that progress to two things: Heather’s determination and the amazing care she received at On With Life.

Heather is aware of the accident and the devastating loss of Carson and Claire.

She, like the rest of us, is coping as best as she can, given the circumstances and her injuries.

Chase, our 3-year-old son, is home doing as well as he can. He is keenly aware of the accident and the resulting deaths and injuries, as he was conscious throughout the accident, as well as during his time in the hospital.

I returned to work in mid-June and am very appreciative of the incredible support from my employer, Jacobson Companies, and my coworkers. I am also greatly appreciative of our neighbors, friends and the entire community who have reached out in every way imaginable over the past five months to make life manageable for us.

Organ Donation

Our children, Claire and Carson, were organ donors. It was a difficult choice but one with which we are tremendously pleased. We have never regretted this choice and that was reaffirmed when we learned of the good that came of their donations.

The organ donation process became very real and moving when we were given the list of recipients, some of whom are alive today because of Carson and Claire. The following is the legacy Carson and Claire left behind:

- Carson’s liver went to a 5-month-old boy.

- Carson’s left kidney went to a 52-year-old mother of two, who has been undergoing dialysis three times per week since November 2007.

- Carson’s right kidney went to a 50-year-old mother of six, who has been undergoing daily dialysis for 2years.

- Carson’s heart valves went to help two children.

- Carson’s corneas went to an 8-year-old girl and a 40-year-old man.

- Claire’s heart went to a 3-month-old boy who was in end stage heart failure.

- Claire’s liver went to an 11-month-old boy.

- Claire’s kidneys went to a 51-year-old mother of seven.

Organ donation allows common people to do uncommon good. The choice to donate life is extremely personal. If nothing else good comes of our situation, we hope that everyone will educate themselves about the need and importance of organ donation by going to www.iowadonornetwork.org.

Moving forward

While our primary focus has been Heather and Chase’s physical, emotional and cognitive recoveries over the past five months, it is difficult not to concern ourselves with the potential criminal proceedings. We are anxious for justice to run its course so that we can close this chapter and go on about our lives. We have a tremendous confidence in the Ankeny Police Department and all the law enforcement agencies who have been involved in the investigation, as well as the Polk County Prosecutors office, that justice will be served in due time.

- Troy DeJoode, Ankeny

DES MOINES, Iowa — A central Iowa woman is still recovering after a motorcycle crash left her unable to speak, walk and even eat nearly one year ago.

Dezerae Songer, 25, went out for a spur-of-the-moment ride last September. Her mother said it was a decision that nearly killed her.

Songer was involved in a crash that put her in a coma for seven months.

“She was in a coma, unresponsive,” said her mother, Kelly Peacock.

She said her daughter made a gradual comeback over the last seven months and now slowly remembers things.

Continue reading article – HERE.

ANKENY, Iowa — An Iowa mother who was in a coma for nearly a month after a crash that killed two of her children is now awake.

Troy DeJoode (DUH’-jodee) says his wife Heather came out of the coma on Wednesday.

He says she has a type of traumatic brain injury in addition to multiple pelvis and facial fractures.

She’s been released from Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines and has been transferred to On With Life, an inpatient rehabilitation center in Ankeny.

The DeJoodes’ 5-month-old daughter Claire and 5-year-old son Carson died after the May 6 accident.

Troy DeJoode says a third child, 3-year-old Chase, is doing well and doesn’t appear to have any significant pain in his leg or neck.

Authorities say the family’s vehicle was struck by a pickup truck.

See the article Here.

GRUNDY CENTER – Erika Amfahr celebrated her 24th birthday on a sun-splashed Thursday in April.

Those who love her took a second to let it all soak in.

No one takes the little moments with Erika for granted anymore. And they haven’t done so since Jan. 13, 2007 – an evening where everything went so terribly wrong.

“I felt almost like I was dead,” Erika recalled of that night.

“She’s beaten all the odds,” Lisa Fiene said of her friend and former teammate.

Amfahr was a 5-foot-10 force of nature at times during her days as a Grundy Center Spartan.

She was a lock-down defender in basketball, and she was a left-handed hitter with enough power in volleyball to garner third-team all-state honors in 2003. That eventually earned her a spot on the volleyball squad at Simpson College in Indianola.

Before long, Amfahr was a thriving college ambassador and a key cog in the Simpson Storm’s attack on the volleyball court.

“We made it to nationals (in 2006) and Erika was a key contributor to that,” explained Fiene, a Waverly native. “She dominated – she hit harder than anyone.”

But all that careened off course on Jan. 13, 2007, during an ominous winter storm.

After a late-afternoon workout in Indianola, Amfahr drove home to spend an evening with her parents. But, as the snow mounted, Cathy Amfahr’s attempts to reach her daughter on the phone went unanswered.

“Finally,” Cathy recalled, “when I was able to get hold of her, it was the hospital in Marshalltown.”

While driving on Iowa Highway 14 that night, barely a dozen miles from Grundy Center, Erika had collided head-on with a van that had swerved out of control.

“Luckily, no one was killed,” noted Al Jones, Erika’s high school basketball coach, “but she was on the table, and her parents told me they had to revive her three times with brain trauma.”

Eventually, Erika was rushed by ambulance to Des Moines. There, she would lay in a coma for more than five weeks.

“Seeing her on the monitor, and with the tubes … (was tough),” noted Erika’s longtime friend, Allison Ringena, who’s currently an emergency room nurse at Grundy County Memorial Hospital.

“It was out of this world,” said Fiene. “Seeing someone in that much pain. … I’ve never felt like that before. It was definitely a lot worse than we anticipated.”

Due to the brain trauma, the left side of Erika’s body had largely been incapacitated.

“She had to re-learn everything,” Cathy explained. “It was basically starting life all over again. She had to re-learn how to swallow.

“It was her memory that was the greatest concern; she questioned whether (her father) Bob and I were her parents. … It was very difficult. But that’s part of the process, the healing of the brain.”

Fortunately for the Amfahrs, Erika’s stubborness survived. And, as a result, so did she.

Erika Amfahr cited one main reason for why she loves sports: “Wanting to overcome the opponent,” she noted. Maybe that statement helps explain her steady progress over the second half of 2007.

She spent roughly 5 1/2 months at On With Life, a brain-injury rehabilitation center in Ankeny. Upon arrival in Ankeny, Erika couldn’t walk. By the time she left, she had improved immensely, though she didn’t remember much of her stay at the facility.

“I was like, ‘What happened?’ I didn’t remember the accident at all,” Erika noted recently. “When I snapped out of it, … everything was a lot slower.”

Much of the next year required rehab sessions at Covenant Medical Center in Waterloo and extensive work with the University of Northern Iowa’s speech and hearing clinic.

To aid Erika’s recovery, her parents walked away from stable jobs. It initially took multiple family members to help Erika navigate the stairs to her old bedroom in Grundy Center. Thus, Bob retired early from John Deere, and Cathy stopped her commute to Waterloo, where she had worked with Hawkeye Community College.

“You just had to be there,” Bob Amfahr said, explaining his thought process as a parent. “When she left Mercy Hospital in Des Moines to go to On With Life in Ankeny, she was just getting off a ventilator. … She had no memory. She was unable to move her arm. And she was still in a wheelchair.”

Bob and Cathy visited their daughter every day in Ankeny. All told, the couple spent nearly seven months away from their home in Grundy Center.

“They were there, every day,” Erika noted. “It was great to have them around. I felt bad, in a sense, that they gave up so much for me.

“It’s because of those people I am where I am.”

Grundy Center and surrounding communities also enveloped Erika with love and support. Friends like Ringena and Katie Hoskins, for example, sold orange bracelets with Erika’s nickname, “Spud,” on them and asked for donations to help with the Amfahrs’ expenses.

“We sold a ton,” said Ringena. “They had to do a couple re-orders.”

Of course, the Simpson Storm gathered for Erika’s cause, too, sponsoring a youth volleyball tournament in which proceeds aided the Amfahr family.

“It was crazy,” said Erika, “to hear about how many people have kept up with me through this journey and recovery.”

Truthfully, the recovery isn’t over. But Erika will take another quantum leap in the right direction on May 22 when she graduates from college – barely 39 months since she was in a coma with her life in peril.

It wasn’t easy, but Erika returned to Simpson with an intense, laser-locked focus two years ago and overcame a sizeable obstacle.

“It’s a phenomenon,” noted Tiffany Everding, one of Erika’s best friends and a former teammate at Simpson. “It’s just her personality to fight through whatever’s in her way.”

“I’m not gonna lie: it was tough,” Erika said. “My first year back (at Simpson) I knew the year below me, so I lived with them. But this year, when I went back and didn’t live with anybody I knew, it was tough.”

Among the thoughts that’ll be racing through Amfahr’s mind on graduation day?

“I think it’ll be like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Am I really getting my diploma? Is it really happening?” she offered.

Erika is realistic. She knows the odometer is still rolling on her road to recovery. Her left arm is still ailing, and her thought-process is still a bit slower than she’d like. The business student hopes for a job in retail, yet knows an uncertain future awaits her.

“When you put ‘brain injury’ on your resume, I’m not sure how appealing that is,” she said with a short laugh.

Yet, everything Erika has overcome serves as a strong indication that nothing is impossible. That’s why the Amfahrs and those close to them soaked it all in on April 22.

“I said, ‘Happy birthday, love. Hope you have a good day,’” Ringena said, recalling a text-message sent to her friend. “She’s an inspiration to all of us now.”

“I had been there when she was eating through a tube,” noted Everding. “We’re blessed that we’re able to make more memories since the accident.”

You can be certain the Amfahr family reveled in that April 22 birthday celebration. They gave thanks for a daughter’s toughness, resilience and grit.

“She’s not a quitter,” Cathy Amfahr said.

“That determination – that fighting spirit – I used to teach her, as a mother, that that attitude would get her in trouble. But we thank God for it, because that helped her along.”

See Article Here

Jan. 13, 2007: The day of the accident

Cathy Amfahr walked from the warmth of Carver-Hawkeye Arena in Iowa City into the blustery, cold air. The weather had deteriorated since morning, when Cathy and her husband, Bob, left Grundy Center for a University of Iowa men’s basketball game.

As soon as she got into their car, Cathy called their youngest daughter, Erika. The snow was only getting worse. Don’t come home, Cathy warned her daughter. The roads are awful.

But Erika was 20 years old and full of spunk, a junior at Simpson College, a volleyball star. And that night was a friend’s 21st birthday party near home. She couldn’t miss it. She’d be home in her 1990 Buick LaSabre just past dark, Erika reassured her mother.

Reluctantly, her parents agreed. When Cathy called later, Erika told her she was near home. Be careful, her mother said. Call when you’re home.

“She never called, and she never called,” Cathy said. “So I called her. She didn’t pick up. And you get that knot in your stomach.”

Finally, a voice answered.

“Is Erika there?” Cathy asked.

“She’s been in a car accident,” answered somebody in a Marshalltown emergency room.

Not long before, around 6:20 p.m., Grundy County Sheriff’s Deputy Ron Tordoff had pulled up to a car accident on Iowa Highway 14, near an S-curve less than 15 miles from Erika’s home.

It was a scene Tordoff would not soon forget: a mangled van and pickup truck in the road, and a third car in a ditch. The third car was a silver Buick LaSabre, and its front end was crushed like an accordion. The van had slid head-on into Erika’s car.

Freezing rain fell on the snow-covered road. Erika was clinging to life. A Life Flight helicopter was summoned, but weather prevented it from taking off, so an ambulance took Erika to Marshalltown, where she lay until her mother, clutching her rosary, walked in.

This is what Cathy Amfahr saw: Erika’s neck was in a brace. Her motionless body was covered by tubes, recognizable only by her curly blond hair. Doctors couldn’t yet tell the extent of the injury to the right side of her brain.

To Cathy, it felt like an awful dream. But she remembers thinking one thing: Her daughter was a fighter.

“You still go through that pain, what your daughter was, what your hope for her was,” Cathy said recently. “And what she is now. She is remarkable. You still have hope, and you have belief.”

Nov. 11, 2006: 63 days before the accident

A short story ran inside The Des Moines Register’s sports section:

“Simpson falls to Rhodes in semifinals of NCAA Central Region in St. Louis,” the headline read. “Third-seeded Rhodes College turned a 0-2 deficit into a 3-2 win Friday against second-seeded Simpson at the NCAA Central Region semifinals at St. Louis.”

The Simpson Storm had a great women’s volleyball team that year, and one of the big reasons was a lanky, 5-foot-9 player named Erika Amfahr.

Growing up in Grundy Center, Erika played every sport, but her favorite was volleyball. Her parents watched her in awe: “Come on, Spud!” they yelled. She’d been wrinkly as a baby, like a baked potato; her dad’s nickname for her stuck.

Spud was the most athletic of the family’s girls, making third team all-state her senior year for volleyball. Her powerful left-handed spike cleared out opponents and caught the eye of Simpson College coach Lana Smith. Smith saw a girl who jumped well, with a powerful arm swing and a quick wrist snap.

“She played with a lot of fire,” Smith said. “She worked very hard and brought her teammates with her, a great presence as a leader.”

Erika loved Simpson. She volunteered as an orientation leader, welcoming new students with her bright smile. Her volleyball teammates thought she needed a more grown-up nickname than Spud. They called her Tater Tot.

Her junior year, Erika developed into a star, third on the team in kills. In the first game against Rhodes in the NCAA tournament, Erika led a comeback with a spike to tie, then a block to win. But the girls lost three games in a row to Rhodes, conceding the match and ending their season.

But Erika’s future looked bright. Her coach thought Erika could be all-conference her senior year.

Nobody knew at the time, of course, but Erika had just played her final match.

Jan. 19, 2007: Six days after the accident

Erika’s mother sat next to her daughter’s bed at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines. Machines beeped incessantly.

The past six days had been a nightmare. Erika was in a coma with what doctors called a “diffuse axonal injury.” In its most severe form, 90 percent of victims of this type of brain injury remain unconscious; the 10 percent who wake up are significantly impaired. Doctors didn’t know the extent of Erika’s neurological function.

Sitting next to Erika, here’s what Cathy Amfahr saw: A ventilator breathing for her daughter’s bruised lungs. The lower half of Erika’s body was battered, with a fractured left leg and torn ligaments in her right ankle. Erika’s temperature swung wildly, as did her heart rate. Her body tremored.

“You were just praying she would be able to be functioning at some level that’s productive,” said Smith, her volleyball coach. “As every week went on and she still was unconscious, the concern just got greater and greater.”

Doctors told the family not to be discouraged. Over the next few weeks, Erika would show only small improvements: She would take breaths on her own, aided by the ventilator. Her eyes would flutter. She would be moved from the intensive care unit to the neurology unit. The progress would be slow, but the family needed to encourage their daughter and stay positive.

And so on this January day, like every day while her daughter was in the hospital, Cathy Amfahr pulled out a children’s book, a well-known story of optimism and hard work.

“A little steam engine had a long train of cars to pull,” Cathy began. “She went along very well till she came to a steep hill. But then, no matter how hard she tried, she could not move the long train of cars.”

Big steam engines wouldn’t help the little steam engine. But then another little steam engine said she’d help, and slowly they climbed the hill. They began to sing: “I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can! I-think-I-can!”

“And they did!” Cathy’s mother read.

June 2, 2007: 140 days after the accident

Erika’s parents wheeled her into their home in Grundy Center.

Since the accident, lots had happened: Erika had moved to a brain rehabilitation facility in Ankeny. Doctors said she was out of her coma. She had learned to lift her head, to swallow, to stand up, to talk, to walk. Her 21st birthday came and went. She remembered none of this.

What she did remember was this: For months, Erika had a vision of riding a school bus. The driver was God. He was old, with white hair and a long white church robe. God walked down the aisle but didn’t talk. It felt like the bus was floating. Erika was confused. She felt dead; she felt fine.

“I went to the driver and said, ‘God, can I go home?’ ” Erika recalled. “And He said, ‘Are you sure you want to?’ “

She was sure. She walked down the school bus stairs.

And there, around the time of her first weekend visit home, Erika’s memory began to wake up.

It was a Saturday. The whole family gathered. Erika came in the back door. Her parents helped her up the steps, one in front, one behind. When Erika walked in, she smelled one of her mother’s signature candles.

“And she just beamed,” Erika’s mother said. “She goes, ‘Mom, the house smells so good! It’s so good to be home!’ “

Tomorrow: 1,225 days after the accident

Tomorrow, Erika Amfahr – 24 years old, her blond hair covered by her graduation cap, her left foot dragging slightly behind her – will walk into the Smith Chapel on the Simpson College campus in Indianola.

Following tradition, Erika will walk between the College Gates. She’ll enter Cowles Fieldhouse, the same gym where she once played volleyball. Her parents will scan the crowd to spot her among the 388 graduating seniors. The alma mater will play.

The past 3½ years have been a battle. Erika started in intensive outpatient therapy near her family’s home after she got out of the Ankeny brain rehabilitation center. She learned to write with her right hand, since her brain injury affected the left side of her body. She worked on building her memory. She learned to walk without hyperextending her knee. She assumed she would never make it back to college.

By fall 2008, Erika had moved in with her sister in Urbandale, and her dad drove her to class at Simpson College. Everything was slower than Erika wanted: walking, writing, comprehending. School was harder.

The next semester she moved back to campus, took two classes, gained a bit more independence. She exercised on an elliptical machine or a stationary bicycle. She got internships for college credit: at a hotel, at a clothing store, at the sports information department at Simpson. She took stats for the volleyball team.

“It’s hell, or it was, but good can come out of this scenario,” Erika said recently. “You can achieve so much more than you ever thought. I’m not at home. I’m not dependent on mom and dad 24/7 – and I can remember when I was. Because in my situation, with what happened, I should be thankful.”

Now Erika is applying for jobs in retail – no luck yet. Some day she’d love to get married, have kids. And she’d love to adopt, her way of giving back to those who helped her.

But first things first. When Erika’s name is announced tomorrow, she’ll walk across the stage. The college president will hand her a piece of paper with the words, “degree of bachelor of arts.”

The only thing Erika is worried about is walking back down the steps. She hopes there’s a railing.

Her mother is worried about something else: “I just hope I can see it through the tears,” Cathy Amfahr said

On Jan. 13, 2007, Amfahr was driving to her hometown of Grundy Center during a winter storm. Twelve miles from home, an oncoming van lost control and hit her head on.

“All of the sudden I literally felt like I was dead,” Amfahr said. “It felt like I was on a school bus and God was the driver. I thought maybe this was a dream, maybe I’m going to wake up, but I didn’t.”

Amfahr was in the intensive care unit at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, where she remained for the next five weeks. She was transferred to On With Life in Ankeny, a brain-injury rehabilitation center that became home for the next five and a half months.

Read the rest of the article: Here

Editor’s Note: “Mike’s Journey” is a three part series on the challenges experienced by Marshalltown’s Mike McNamara and his family. In early April 2009 McNamara, then a Marshalltown High School senior, fell into a coma as the result of a brain injury contracted after an illness. After an extensive hospital stay at Mary Greeley Hospital in Ames, McNamara transferred to Ankeny’s On With Life for rehabilitation. This three-part series continues tomorrow.

Read the article: HERE

“Its the phone call you never want to get,” said Barb Cassler, recalling the snowy day in December when she got word that her daughter, Elizabeth, had been in a car accident.

Continue reading:  http://www.whotv.com/news/who-story-graduated-licenses-021910,0,6278910.story

To say it was an exciting time would be a great understatement! The TV crew followed our persons served, family members and staff through therapies, nursing services, activities, and special events, and even made a house call to “The Apartments at OWL Creek.” The production crew was obviously touched by the nature of the work that we do and how incredible our mission is. They were extremely generous with compliments about the way our staff deliver services and were intrigued by the stories which we were able to share.

We are anxiously waiting notification of our scheduled TV date; the show will most likely be broadcast on the Discovery channel. Please check our website for the exact date, time and network. We will post the information as soon as it becomes available. Please join in to watch on our special date! If we don’t already have your e-mail address and you would like to receive notification about this special showing, please send your information to: info@onwithlife.org.

On With Life was discussed on C-Span2′s BookTV and NPR’s Diane Rehm Show as part of a feature on Head Cases: Stories of Brain Injury and Its Aftermath by Michael Mason.

http://www.headcasesthebook.com/