Help Rob be Dad!

Meet Rob Owens and his beautiful daughters Josephine and Vivienne who both are in High School now. Rob tries his best to be the best Dad and give his girls all he can. He works long hard hours as a professional video/audio designer and technician all over the country. He has been on tour with some top-named entertainers in this country including the late Donna Summer. He is also a partner in a newly formed production company based out of New York. Everything he does has been to help support his girls Jojo and Viv.

On June 2nd Rob was on his way back from a gig in LA and walking through JFK airport in New York when he collapsed!

He was taken to a hospital in Jamaica Queens where he was stabilized but then transferred to Lenox Hill in Manhattan for surgery on what was determined to be a Type A Aortic Dissection (essentially a tear in his aorta). During the Aorta repair surgery, the doctors realized that he also had an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm which was simultaneously dissecting. Thankfully he made it through the 12-hour surgery for both issues.

Due to the extenuating circumstances and so much trauma to his body, his kidneys also began to fail and was put on dialysis and a ventilator and was placed into a medically induced coma so that his body could rest as best as possible with less stress on his heart and lungs. A few days after surgery his left leg was not showing signs of a pulse, so it was determined to try a bypass surgery in his left leg to get the blood flowing. The bypass got the pulse back, but it was still cold, and no color returned to his leg. Two weeks post-surgery the doctors put him on a more long-term breathing machine called a Tracheostomy to allow Rob to breathe with assistance.

On June 16th, after repeated efforts, the doctors determined they would need to amputate his left leg above the knee. The good news is that seemed to have helped Rob’s body decide to heal in other places other than his leg. A week or so after the amputation the doctors started to ween down the sedation and Rob opened his eyes.

After several weeks in ICU Rob was eventually transferred to a long-term care facility that is meant to rehabilitate him and begin to wean him off the Tracheostomy so that Rob can begin to breathe on his own. As of today, while the machines are lessened, he is still breathing with assistance from machines. Rob is also still on dialysis (3 times a week) and will be reevaluated shortly to see what the long-term prognosis of dialysis is, and Rob also started to receive some physical therapy this week, which is great since he has been bed bound for the last 8 weeks so his muscles are very week.

Rob is currently able to mouth words to his daughters, girlfriend Roe, ex-wife and Mom of the girls Mary Ellen and other friends all of whom have been cheering for him from the beginning of this horrible ordeal.

When you ask Rob right now what people can do to help he mouths “The Girls” and “Take care of what they need” This fundraiser is meant to help him help them because he is first and foremost…. DAD to Jojo and Viv!

This summer there were some “me-and-my-girls projects” Rob was going to be working on with his girls. We need your help to support getting these projects done and get Jojo and Viv ready for their next year of high school without their Dad at home. We need you to help Rob not worry about his girls and focus on his recovery. We all want to see them through this so they can finally be together as a family and heal.