Uncle Donkey’s family story… The one that tells it all

Hello, my name is Cody. I am a 34 year old quadriplegic and full-time father of two amazing kids. My children and I have one really incredible story and are definitely in need of some desperate help. We have been through so much and it seems like we can never catch a break. So in addition to a GoFundMe account https://www.gofundme.com/f/quadriplegic-father-and-kids-in-need-of-miracle?utm_source=customer&utm_medium=copy_link&utm_campaign=p_lico+share-sheet

I have started this blog in hopes create some kind of secondary income to help our situation on my own. I’ve never opened up a website or done any kind of blogging in the past so I’m learning along the way.

June 28th 2024 will Mark 11 years since everything happened and a car accident completely changed our life. However before we get into our story please allow me to fill you in on our current situation…

I have a special needs Trust that is supposed to pay for my needs… like caregivers and Specialty equipment that Medicaid and Medicare will not cover and it is rapidly running out of money. That being said it was initially set up to last for the rest of my life. I was also married at the time and we didn’t calculate the divorce, no more wife meant I now have to pay for night time care providers. There was also no way to know I would need to pay the very important and expensive costs of child custody court. At the time my ex-wife (she is doing good now) was making some horrible decisions and I had to make sure the kids were safe. Not to mention the impact covid-19 had on everything and everyone how these things would impact the account. Keep in mind that this is a Special Needs Trust so not one cent can go towards the cost of my child care or anything that they need, it’s only for me… as of right now the trust is paying over $50,000 annually just for my night time caregivers. That doesn’t count any of my other necessities or anything. If things don’t change dramatically and I don’t find some kind of help I need to sell the house we are currently living in ASAP. The house I thought I was being super responsible buying, the house I planned on leaving for my children when I pass, the house they have grown up in and is all they know…. on top of that even if we do sell the house there is no way I can afford a monthly rent payment with the little bit of SSDI I get each month, not to mention I need a four bedroom so that I can have at least one full-time caregiver in case of emergency.

Here’s a little information to help you get to know me I hope you understand the type of person I am. YES! I am a quadriplegic, but, first, and before anything else… I am the full time father of 2 really great kids… My daughter is 14 and my son just turned 13. They are such great kids! Some might say I am a single father, however they do go to Mom’s two weekends a month, or every other weekend(Friday-Sunday night) and an occasional day or two here and there… Otherwise for the most part they are here with me the majority of the time. No, I’m not complaining or, trying to brag, or make myself seem significant… Just trying to get you to the point where you can understand our situation. I also have a stepson. However he lives with his mother and I see him occasionally. He just turned 18 and I took him to get his state ID and then gave him some money to buy lottery tickets. When my ex-wife (Jess) and I first met, she already had a little boy. He was almost 2 years old and his real dad was nowhere in the picture. From that day forward I raised him like he was my own child. We were together for 11 years. I’ve always been the type of guy to give the shirt off my back or the last dollar in my pocket to somebody else in need. I am the kind of guy that would help a little old lady out to her car without hesitation, the kind of guy that just worked a 16-hour shift but gets off and helps the neighbor without even thinking about it. I was, heck, I still am, the type to stay positive and spread positivity. I am almost always very generous, if I can help I will. I Always think before I act and be respectful and polite. Never be selfish always be thoughtful. If you were able to ask anyone in my life… They would all tell you, I’m a stand-up, trustable, One of a Kind, genuine soul that’s always there when you need him. I put my family first and my priorities second. Always ready and willing to lend a helping hand. Since the accident took place almost 11 years ago, it has been Non-Stop struggle and fight to maintain any kind of life. Non-stop stress and struggle between health and financial and learning how to do this all on my own while raising children alone for the most part. As soon as something good happens it seems like something negative happens shortly after. I’ve almost died four or five different times just since the accident. I never ask for help, but, this is it, it’s our turn for a miracle, we deserve it… I am asking please help, we’ve been put through enough and need a break a chance to take a deep breath and think about all the life experiences. Good and bad. A good hoorah a pat on the back. Just the chance to not be constantly worried about something or in the hospital or wondering who my next caregiver is going to be and if we can even find somebody. A chance for a muscles to loosen up and the air to seem lighter. A chance for the kids and I to bring each other close and make some good solid memories with nothing negative in between. Four more years and my daughter is 18 and we don’t get these opportunities after that. I mean we do but they’re not the same.

Thank you for sticking around this long, we really do need a miracle and we really appreciate it. Everything you have read and are about to read is 100% truthful.

Our story

June 28th 2013 was a hot, dry, 108° summer day. I woke up , mowed the lawn, and then packed everything for our camping trip. Once I was done, two of my brothers and my sister-in-law met at my house anticipating a fun weekend at our family reunion along the Snake River. Finally everything’s packed, our vehicles are looked over, and all seems well… My ex wife, our three little ones, and I all loaded up and got on the road with my brothers and sister-in-law following close behind… It wasn’t supposed to be a long drive, a little over an hour in total. Little did we know the nightmare about to unfold. We were about 45 minutes into our hour long drive. Cruise control set, my ex, feet on the dash and her seat tilted back, all three kids sound asleep in their car seats, windows down, and cruise control set. I went to pass a slow moving semi truck pulling a trailer uphill and just as I got past the front of his truck, all hell broke loose!

Boom, all of a sudden the vehicle jerks violently and the sound of a horrible noise. My driver side tire blew out. Suddenly It’s all I can do to control the vehicle and the next thing I know, I can’t. Now we are facing the semi I just passed. We are practically going backwards down the freeway at 75 miles an hour. We hit the dirt shoulder and the vehicle violently starts rolling before finally coming to rest on its Wheels. My brothers and sister-in-law watching everything happen wishing, wanting, and praying it was not true. After the dust settles they all start to panic and run up to us. I remember my brother saying Cody Cody are you okay? I had broken my neck. I remember telling him I can’t move my arms or legs I need you to get me out of here it’s going to catch fire. I was in fear that my hot exhaust pipe would set the dry desert vegetation on fire and we would burn as I knew we came to rest back on the tires.

I don’t remember much as I was coming in and out of Consciousness. We were only 3 miles away from the exit we needed to take and less than 15 minutes from the family reunion. My father was already at the family reunion and came to the scene. I remember, He asked me how I was doing and I smartly replied… How does it look like I’m doing and gave a little grin. The next thing I remember is the sound of crunching metal as they used the jaws of life to cut apart the car. Then I remember suddenly being in a helicopter as they were air lifting me to the hospital. My ex and the kids were taken to One hospital and I was taken to a completely different one. When I got to the hospital I was able to speak with my mother right before surgery. All I kept asking was how is my ex and the kids? How is she and the kids? She assured me that she had been in contact with my ex and they were all okay. It was estimated that we rolled between five and eight times and somehow they were all okay. No broken bones or anything just a couple scrapes and bruises. I told my mom… I said Mom I was doing everything right, we had our seat belts on, I was doing the speed limit, I wasn’t looking down I was doing everything right I promise. She tried her best to let me know she believed and trusted me before I was rushed off to surgery.

I remember waking up… My ex was there and some other family I don’t remember exactly who. All I wanted to do was ask how the kids were doing. I couldn’t talk though. There were tubes in my mouth and they had done a tracheotomy so I could breathe through all the swelling. I almost couldn’t communicate at all until they finally brought in a computer. It was able to sense where my eyes were looking and I could look at letters on a screen and type words. It took forever to spell out words and sentences but it worked. I learned that the kids were still doing perfectly fine thank God. I remember I didn’t want them to come and see me because I didn’t want them to be afraid of what I looked like with all the tube’s and stuff attached to me.

Following the surgery, the doctor told everyone I would never move anything from the neck down. He told my ex she should put me in a nursing home and move on with her life. About a week and a half two weeks later, I could just barely move my arms a couple inches below the elbow. My doctor kept telling everyone he’s not doing that it’s just nerves it’s just nerves. As time went on I started being able to move them a little bit more and a little bit more. I remember, they would fall off the arms of the wheelchair and rub on the tires and I didn’t even know it. Even if I did I wasn’t strong enough to pick them back up and I couldn’t talk to ask for help. I would remain in the hospital for 4 long months. Learning how to breathe all over again, eat all over again, and talk all over again. I would do extensive physical therapy in hopes that I may walk again. By the time I got discharged I could just barely raise my hands above my head. Just enough to operate a power wheelchair .

Today, I can almost raise my arm all the way up however I have no ability to move my wrists or fingers and I have no feeling below my nipples. I am what is considered an incomplete quadriplegic. I broke C3 4 and 5 vertebrae and they fused C2 through C6.

I ended up happening to stay like a week after my discharge date because my ex had to find a new house for us to live in before I could go home and she just wasn’t having any luck. Before the accident we were living in a single wide mobile home and it wasn’t going to work for me now being confined to a wheelchair. Finally though, I believe it was the 13th or 14th of October I was able to go home. I remember being so excited to go be with my kids and wife. I was so happy and happy and excited to finally be back at home. For the longest time we didn’t have a vehicle to transport me in. When we would go places my ex would ride a bike and one kid would sit on my lap one kid would sit on my feet and our oldest would stand on the back and hang on to my power wheelchair. We went everywhere like that. The kids loved doing it and we loved to be gone from the house enjoying the outdoors.

In the next few years we set up the trust, made sure to start college funds for all three of the kids, got a handicap accessible van, And through the trust purchased the home we live in now. Things seemed to be going all right.

About a year or so after we purchased the home I became very sick and no idea why. I would spend days in bed and missed Christmas with my kids and I also missed New Year’s. I didn’t know at the time but my blood sugars were dangerously High. I ended up going into diabetic ketoacidosis and I almost died. I spent a couple weeks in the hospital learning that I was Now a type one diabetic with a long road ahead of himself. It was a lot to learn let me tell you. Diabetes is not easy especially for a quadriplegic. It seems like ever since then it has pretty much been non-stop issues. Things would be going great for a couple weeks or a month and then boom something happens, for example.. . I end up in the hospital with a pressure ulcer, get a bladder infection, my wheelchair would break, or my handicap accessible vehicle would break down, just to name a few. It seems like absolutely every time something good happens it’s soon followed by something very negative. I barely get time to breathe before something comes up. I just tried to stay positive and push forward the best I can and set an example for my children.

Four years after the accident, came the divorce…  We’re not going to dive into that though. I am not here to make anybody look bad and her and I are getting along pretty good these days and that’s great for the kids. However between that and the fact that I discovered she was having an affair, it just made everything worse. She went and filed for a divorce and I gladly signed the papers. I was super scared I didn’t know what I was going to do and I thought I was going to end up in some kind of a nursing home or something. After we were legally divorced she did not move out right away and her and her partner we’re staying in my home against my will. I almost had to legally evict them. I borrowed $1,000 and give it to her so she had enough to get into a place for her and the kids.

What follows is the worst time of my life by far. My ex was dealing with some things and she knew she could not reliably care for the kids at the time. Health and Welfare got involved and decided to take custody from me because I was in a wheelchair. At the same time I came down with three pressure ulcers. I was very malnourished and wasn’t getting proper nutrients to help prevent them. I ended up being hospitalized with a very serious bone infection.

For the next 7 months, I would bounce from hospital to hospital and I had to have several different surgeries and it was a nightmare. So here I am, a newly divorced quadriplegic that just lost custody of his children for no reason and now I have a horrible bone infection and I’m in the hospital. I thought my free life was over and when I was all healed up I would be in a nursing home for sure. Thankfully I was wrong. My doctor ended up discharging me before I was completely healed and I was supposed to remain on bed rest. However upon getting home and getting things back in order I instantly started working on the process to regain custody of my children. Within a month I was off bed rest and they were living with me full time. My ex is doing really good now and my stepson lives with her full time. Him and I do keep in contact but not like did back then. My daughter loves volleyball and placed Varsity twice. She gets good grades and she loves having time for her friends. My son is an active gamer and you just got done with wrestling season. He gets really good grades as well. All three kids are doing really well these days. Better than I was when I was their age for sure. They are all about helping Dad out and sticking up for him, we love our I love yous and we don’t go anywhere without saying them.

Shortly after I got custody back was when covid-19 hit. It was a big deal for me because I lost all but one caregiver and the company that supplied my daytime caregivers had nobody that could come work for me. So for over 2 years I only had one caregiver and she is in her 60s and has bad knees. That being said she couldn’t work everyday of the week so I was alone on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I couldn’t go anywhere but to and from appointments. I couldn’t take my kids to the park I couldn’t go on drives I couldn’t do anything I was stuck in my house. It took a really long time before I finally found a second caregiver and when I did we went everywhere, you could not find me at home. Such good news right? Well yes but, remember something negative always follows something positive in my life. About a month after the caregiver started I got a stage four pressure ulcer because the air cushion on my wheelchair went flat and I did not know it. I put myself on bed rest immediately and started getting every last ounce of nutrition I could. The doctor doesn’t understand it and it doesn’t make sense but I was able to completely heal it in 5 months. I just got off bed rest the 8th of January and I was excited for spring. Ready to have fun with the kids and hopefully start a new IT company with my sister-in-law to maybe one day be able to pay for things myself and not even have to rely on a trust. One can hope. However as soon as I got off bed rest and things are looking good that’s when I got hit with the reality of my trust account and the negatives that come with that as well as a bad CD axle on my van. Got the axle fixed now I’m just focused on what I need to do to proceed with this trust. It is very overwhelming. I’m trying to stay positive and upbeat as I know that being negative and dwelling on things only makes it worse.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for taking the time to read through our story. I hope it’s nothing else this gives you a little inspiration. I always tell myself it could be worse. Somehow I find the strength to keep getting up in the morning and grinding forward. The kids definitely help but Life’s too short to just be annoyed and sad all the time. Again thank you and Anything you can do to help is much appreciated and very much needed. Even if you just share my story. Anyhow We hope you have a wonderful day and lots of good fortune in the days, weeks, months, and years to follow! Thanks

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask I will answer them as best I can. As I stated in the beginning of our story, I started this blog in hopes of creating a secondary income to help out. It’s going to take time and it’s going to be a while before it will generate any income. Until then I have started a GoFundMe and if you can or would like to help us out here is the link

https://gofund.me/a13ceee4