INSPIRED TO FIGHT
Paralyzed mother wants to get better for her daughter
Jessie Schmidt doesn’t want much. She isn’t hoping for anything extraordinary.
It’s the little things that she wants back, the normal things that so many people take for granted. Like simply having a chance to be a mother, to take care of her precious 8-year-old daughter, Ahnjole Gordon.
“I can’t wait to just hold her, to sleep with her at night,” Jessie said. “That’s her favorite thing to do. I’d put her to bed and wake up with her next to me in my bed.”
But things that would be easy for most people, like putting a child to bed, are monumental challenges for the 31-year-old. Just about 20 months ago she was in a violent car crash in Montgomery County that has left her paralyzed from the chest down.
Jessie’s recovery has been slow and painful. She’s been in two hospitals, a rehab center and, for the last nine months, a nursing home in Exeter Township.
When she’s out of bed she’s bound to a wheelchair, and likely will be for the rest of her life. It’s difficult for her to bend her body, and sitting up for even moderate amounts of time is agonizing.
Her arms are stiffly bent at the elbow, tucking her hands in toward her chest. She can use them, after months of practice, but their motion is labored and exhausting.
Despite all of that, Jessie has a lofty goal. She wants to move out of the nursing home and into a place of her own, somewhere where she and Ahnjole can be together and rebuild their lives.
She wants a home where she can teach her daughter how to do chores and have her daughter help paint her nails and do her hair. A home where she can help her daughter do her homework and give her some structure.
“I want her to see I’m still her mother, despite everything,” Jessie said.
The day everything changed
There wasn’t anything particularly odd or special about Aug. 20, 2020. At least not at first.
Jessie was living in Norristown at the time, and shortly after she woke up she got a call from Ahnjole’s father, Jimmack Gordon, say
ing that she could pick her daughter up later that day at his home in Pottstown. It was her week to have her, and Jessie was eager to spend time with her little girl.
The plan was for Jessie to drive to Pottstown, do a couple loads of laundry at Jimmack’s place, then return to Norristown with Ahnjole.
Jessie had just gotten her driver’s license 27 days before, in part to make trips like this one to pick up her daughter. And three weeks before she had bought a Mazda sedan through Facebook Marketplace.
Jessie said she had driven the car a little bit, but she had been unable to get it looked over by a mechanic. It was the midst of the COVID shutdown and pretty much everything was closed or operating under reduced hours.
Wanting to see her daughter, Jessie figured the car would be fine. She got a few loads of laundry together, put them in the car and headed off.
She said on her way to Pottstown the car felt funny, but as she drove it seemed to get better.
Jessie stayed a few hours at Jimmack’s place as she waited for her clothes to cycle through the washer and dryer. She and Ahnjole headed out around 6:30 p.m., with the new driver Jessie saying she wanted to leave before it got too dark.
She buckled her daughter into a car seat that was secured onto the back seat, placing the basket filled with folded laundry beside her. The pair made their way to Route 422, about a five- or 10-minute drive, and got on the highway.
After that, Jessie’s memory is blank.
“I don’t remember anything,” she said. “I remember waking up in the hospital days later.”
According to media reports, Jessie’s car left the westbound lanes of the road just after 7 p.m. between the Sanatoga and Armand Hammer Boulevard exits. The car rolled over several times before crashing into some trees.
It is unclear what caused Jessie’s car to run off the road. She has no recollection of what happened.
Jessie, who was not wearing her seatbelt, was thrown out of the driver’s side window during the crash, her body slamming into a tree. Ahnjole was able to crawl over broken glass to get out of the car, suffering only very minor injuries.
“She was trying to make sure I was OK,” Jessie said, tears rolling down her cheeks and her soft voice cracking. “Someone told me later that she was screaming. She didn’t care if she was OK, she just wanted to make sure mommy was OK.”
Jessie was far from OK.
Devastating injuries
Jessie suffered traumatic, life-threatening injuries in the crash.
She was airlifted from the scene to Reading Hospital, where doctors worked to close a gaping gash on her head and otherwise stabilize her. She was then airlifted a second time to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia.
Doctors told her family there was a very good chance she wouldn’t survive.
Jessie doesn’t remember any of that. Her first postcrash memory is waking up in a bed at Jefferson.
“I knew something was wrong because I couldn’t move and I was on this bed, this hospital bed,” she said. “I tried to ask where my daughter was, but I had no voice.”
Doctors had performed a tracheotomy on Jessie, inserting a tube through an incision in her neck and into her lungs so she could breathe. She had also suffered a broken neck and broken spine.
She was paralyzed from the chest down.
Those first few days in Jefferson, Jessie was in and out of consciousness. People who came to visit her, she said, mostly just watched her sleep.
Jessie beat the odds and survived her injuries. But her life had been dramatically and completely changed.
She began a long, difficult journey to recover as much as she could. The first step was breathing without the tracheostomy tube.
“I had to learn how to breathe on my own again,” she said. “That was one of the scariest parts.”
The tube was removed and the hole in her throat covered up. Jessie described the feeling as one of suffocation, saying she had to focus on forcing her body to inhale and exhale.
She couldn’t talk during the process, meaning the panic she felt went unexpressed.
The first time Jessie tried breathing on her own she did it for 45 minutes. The second time for an hour.
The experience terrified her, and she didn’t know if she could keep trying. But one of her therapists asked her what her motivation is for getting better, and things suddenly became clear.
“I said, ‘My daughter,’ and she said, ‘That’s what you focus on,’ “Jessie said. “I wanted to be better for my daughter. Even today I fight for that. I just want to be the best I can for my daughter.”
Jessie’s third attempt at breathing on her own lasted 20 hours.
Jessie’s recovery continued at Jefferson, then at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia. She slowly began to be able to tolerate having her body bent into a sitting position and relearned how to use her arms and hands.
It took a grueling effort, but was well worth the pain, frustration and exhaustion.
“I want to push myself,” she said. “I want my daughter to see me push myself.”
About nine months ago, Jessie was moved to the skilled nursing care unit at Complete Care at Berkshire in Exeter Township. She credits the staff there with helping to nurse her back to health.
“I was down to about 100 pounds,” she said of her condition when she arrived in Exeter. “When I showed up here they were basically picking up the pieces and putting me back together.”
Jessie is still working to improve the mobility in her arms and hands — she’s gotten to the point now where she can handle tasks like feeding herself and putting on her own makeup — and dealing with a lot of pain. She said she feels burning or a pins and needles feeling throughout her body.
But she is determined to keep getting better, and to be able to get out of the nursing home and back into a place of her own where she can raise her daughter.
A place to call home
One of the challenges Jessie is now facing is where, exactly, her new home will be.
She actually has the perfect spot picked out, but there are some problems that need to be solved.
Jimmack and Ahnjole are living in a mobile home just outside of Pottstown with his mother, Denise Hoffmaster. Denise has purchased the trailer next door for Jessie.
That would put Jessie just steps away from Jimmack and Denise, who would serve as her caretakers. And it would mean she could be reunited with her daughter.
Jessie has already started putting together ideas on how to decorate her new home. She said it will feature lots of glam, filled with pink things and things that sparkle.
Medicaid will pay to have the building retrofitted to meet Jessie’s needs by adding a ramp, renovating the bathroom and widening doorways. But the trailer has other issues that won’t be simple to address.
The roof needs to be replaced because of a leak that has led to water damage inside the structure. The cost for a new roof and to repair the damage is somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000.
That’s money that Jessie doesn’t have.
With help from friends and family, Jessie has been trying to raise money. She’s selling bracelets promoting seat belt safety, and created a page on gofundme.com.
Friend Mary Heckman said the online fundraising effort hasn’t been very successful. As of Tuesday it had only raised $745 of its $20,000 goal.
“We’ve had messages from a number of people asking if it’s real or a scam,” she said, shaking her head with disappointment.
Jennifer Harvey, director of social services at Complete Care at Berkshire, said Jessie’s situation is proof that there are flaws in the Medicaid system.
She said the home support aspect of the system has rules that limit where people can stay. The system won’t pay for upgrades to an existing home — like the trailer awaiting Jessie — that aren’t directly related to a medical need.
And if a patient doesn’t have an existing home to move into, they have to use public housing. Medicaid will cover the cost of rent for a public housing unit, but there are lengthy waitlists for those properties.
Even if there was no wait, public housing still is not the best option for Jessie. It would place her much farther away from her caretakers and likely mean her daughter couldn’t live with her.
“Our system is not built for Jessie,” Harvey said.
So, Jessie is forced to wait and hope as her friends and family search for ways to raise the money she needs.
“I’m just trying to find the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.
An important lesson
Jessie is not waiting idly, however.
She has begun sharing her story in hopes that others don’t share her fate. Along with the bracelet campaign, she has also created a YouTube channel devoted to seatbelt safety.
“I would like everybody to put their seatbelts on,” she said of her message.
Jessie said she hopes she can become the face of seatbelt safety, a cautionary tale told to benefit others.
“I want 16-year-olds to have to watch me tell my story for 30 minutes at the DMV before they get their license,” she said with a smile. “I want to be the ‘sad lady’ story they all talk about. They’re going to wear their seatbelts after that, I promise you.”
Jessie said her YouTube channel also focuses on positive messages for others dealing with paralysis or other disabilities. She said her message to them is to never give up and to push yourself to do what you want to do in life.