A 28-year-old Oregon woman who was helping a friend move a piano is now reportedly paralyzed from the waist down after the instrument fell on her in an accident in April.
“She expects to never walk again. She accepted the reality of her situation. But she has an incredible spirit and an overall positive attitude, focusing on what she can do,” Danielle Drummond’s big sister, Rosie Hayne, described in a GoFundMe crowdfunding campaign in early May, noted the New York Post.
Last month, the woman from Cleveland, Ohio, who had recently been living in Oregon, was helping a friend move her piano when the latter allegedly lost her grip on the raised instrument, which fell straight on her, Danielle Drummond told local Cleveland channel WOIO.
The American would then have been rushed to a hospital center, where doctors would have discovered that the heavy piano would have “severed” her spinal cord by fracturing her T11 and T12 vertebrae – the lowest of the thoracic spine –, leaving her “paralyzed from the waist down,” according to the American newspaper.
“I’m trying to keep my spirits up because I know this is my life now, but it’s hard,” she told WOIO. Right now I need a lot more physical therapy. I need to rebuild my strength.”
The 28-year-old American, who lived in a van with her dog Lotus, will now need to find accommodation, get help at home and begin her intensive rehabilitation.
The problem is that the woman would have no family in Oregon and cannot see herself making the 37-hour trip by car, nearly 4,000 kilometers, in her situation.
“I don’t even know how I would get home, much less how to transfer all the medical instruments, and I don’t feel capable right now of taking a car ride or such a long trip on a plane,” she said. she sighed to WOIO.
From a distance, his sister would try to raise funds to help him find a place to stay, and to pay for his medical expenses.
“My little sister means everything to me and I hope that any assistance received can provide financial support for her future medical needs,” she said.
