‘I know I’m going to get better’
Aspiring teacher from Danbury survives 3-story fall in Brooklyn, NY
DANBURY — One wrong step found Jennifer Roos falling off the stairs of a Brooklyn, N.Y. rooftop patio, shattering her feet on impact. Yet not even the months of rehabilitation that lie ahead of her have diminished her determination to stay positive.
“There are definitely days where I'm crying all day,” the 21-year-old Danbury resident said. “I most certainly have days where I'm mad at the world, but for me, I've realized that attitude is very closely correlated with how I feel. If you keep a positive attitude, you're definitely going to heal faster… I know I'm going to get better — pessimism isn't going to get me anywhere.”
Roos, a 2021 graduate of Danbury High School, said she and her boyfriend David Bonetti were visiting a friend who lives in an apartment with a rooftop patio in Brooklyn, N.Y. on Jan. 8. They were descending the stairs from the roof when Roos said she stumbled off the stairs and fell three stories, landing on her feet.
Roos was taken to the trauma center at Brookdale Hospital Medical Center where she had two foot surgeries and a 12hour spinal surgery — the first of many surgeries she'd experience over the following month. She was discharged to Bethel Health Care Center in Bethel on Jan. 20 and was taken to Yale New Haven Hospital on Jan. 25, according to Victoria Markham, Roos' half-sister.
Roos, who celebrated her 21st birthday at Yale New Haven Hospital on Feb. 3, said she was cleared by her physical therapy team on Wednesday to return home to Danbury. She said she and her family are looking for a rehabilitation center where she can receive intensive physical therapy.
Though Roos is on medical leave of absence from her studies at Eastern Connecticut State University in Windham, where she is studying to become an elementary school teacher, she is working with her professors on a plan to continue her studies.
Susannah Richards, one of Roos' professors at Eastern, said she has been collaborating with colleagues to create a plan that will allow Roos to complete her undergraduate and graduate degrees.
“As a professor, she is the kind of student I am happy to go out of my way for,” Richards, an associate English professor, said. “I'm happy I can be part of her support team.”
‘Putting these tiny pieces back together’
Before her accident, Roos said she was in her junior year at Eastern where she is working on a double major in elementary education and liberal studies with a concentration in English. In addition to her academic work, she said she was balancing a “very packed schedule” of student teaching at Bolton Center School in Bolton and work at Red Rock Café in Storrs. Roos said she was planning to continue her student teaching in North Windham and travel to Jamaica for a week of student teaching during her spring semester.
Richards said she only had Roos for one semester for the first part of a twopart “Foundations of Literacy” course, and anticipated teaching Roos in the course's second part this semester.
“She came in with very little knowledge about the content, which I knew from a pre-assessment that I gave them,” Richards said of Roos, “but she was so incredibly open and worked so hard to acquire this body of knowledge that was really new to her but also look at the bigger picture at what she needed in education.”
“I think Jennifer has the aptitude and the desire and the basic skill set that she will be a good elementary school teacher,” Richards said, “and I think she's worthy of investment.”
Roos said she had planned a four-day trip to Manhattan as a Christmas gift for Bonetti. She said they went to Brooklyn on the first night of their trip to visit a friend of Bonnetti and they had all gone up to the rooftop patio to catch up.
“In the beginning, it was great,” Roos said.“We were just talking, and when we went to go back down the latch, they had to open the latch, so I stepped aside to get out of the way, and according to them, I started panicking. I've heard vertigo could be one of the causes, and I tried to step back and catch myself and I stumbled and fell back three stories.”
Roos said she fell to the back of the apartment building, and she sustained two broken feet, one broken ankle, one dislocated ankle, a broken tailbone, broken ribs that punctured both her lungs and a lumbar fraction to her back. Though she doesn't remember the moment of impact, she said she was taken by ambulance to the trauma center at Brookdale Hospital.
Beth DaSilva-Roos said once she and her husband Richard Roos, a fifth grade teacher for Danbury Public Schools, heard about their daughter's accident, “everyone went rushing right to the hospital.”
“On the whole ride down, every scenario went through my head — ‘Is she dead?' ‘Is she paralyzed?' ‘Did she land on her head?'” said DaSilvaRoos, who is also a Danbury teacher. “When we got there, I just remember being so overwhelmed because the doctor gave me a list of all the things she'd broken and I was trying to process it, but we were most concerned about the spinal fracture. She seemed to have some reduced movement and feeling in her lower extremities, so that was a long couple of days because she was in surgery for 12 hours.”
Markham, a resident of Terryville, Conn., said she learned about Roos' accident in a group chat with their father and Roos' other half-siblings, Nicholas Roos of Barre, Vt., and Stephanie Greene of Bristol. Roos lives in Danbury with her parents and brother Josh.
DaSilva-Roos said the moment she saw her daughter wiggle her toes was when she knew everything would be OK.
“I made it all the way through the first two days on the ball, on top of it, asking the right questions, but then completely fell apart once I realized everything is going to be OK,” DaSilva-Roos said.
Markham said she was able to talk to Roos on Jan. 18 via FaceTime.
“My phone started going off and my dad was FaceTiming me, and I answered and it was Jen,” Markham said, “and immediately I was holding back tears. She had just gotten the [ventilation] tube out of her throat. She didn't have much of a voice, but that was the first time I was able to talk to her… She was very upbeat, considering everything that happened.”
Roos said she felt “beyond recognition swollen” when she woke up in the hospital's intensive care unit, and that her main points of concern were the ventilator tube and the external fixators in both her feet.
“Basically, they explained to me that obviously I'll have pains for the rest of my life,” Roos said. “I'm in very high risk for arthritis and the recovery time for my feet is long. I have a brace I have to wear for my back for a couple of months.”
“The real long part is my feet,” she said. “They explained to me I shattered almost every little bone in both my feet. My surgeon is like a watchmaker — he's putting these tiny pieces back together. Those are what hurt the most.”
‘This could have ended differently’
In the past few weeks, Roos said she has had surgery to reconstruct both her feet and her broken ankle, though she won't be bearing weight on her feet for many months.
DaSilva-Roos said she's most excited for the moment her daughter will be able to put her feet on the ground.
“She's always on the go, she does not stay in one place,” she said of her daughter. “I'm excited for the day she can stand again, put her feet on the ground. She's going to have a tough time not being able to do that.”
Markham set up a GoFundMe page “Jennifer's Recovery” last month to assist with Roos' medical expenses. As of Friday, “Jennifer's Recovery” has raised over $38,000 of the page's $50,000 goal.
Roos described the GoFundMe page's success as “overwhelming in the best way,” while her mother said she was “blown away” by the number of people who donated to the page.
“We've had so many expenses, hotels, copays and everything,” said DaSilvaRoos, who is on unpaid leave from her job as a fourth grade teacher at Danbury Public Schools. “It's been so helpful. I am so grateful.”
Markham said she felt setting up the GoFundMe page was what she could do to help her sister, especially since the accident could have ended differently.
“It's been a very difficult experience,” she said, “but I feel on the sibling aspect this has definitely brought all of us closer than we were before … It's just when I go back to the whole group chat, just checking in with each other more often, my mind goes to ‘This could have ended differently and we could have been without a sister.'”