Mike Keil's Village:Return the Love

Mike’s Village: Let’s Return the Love!

My name is Joshua Keil, and I write this with the hope of capturing the rather desperate emotional and economic condition in which my family has lived ever since I can remember. My father, Robert Keil, known to most as Mike, began teaching high school in 1976 and continued to do so up until my mother’s chronic illnesses forced him to retire in 2012. However, in October of 2014, he suffered a massive stroke, resulting in physical deficits on his right side. And yet, as debilitating as these deficits are, they are nothing when compared to the profound speech deficit he has suffered as a result of the stroke.

As a teacher, my father’s voice was a fundamental part of who he was, a tool which he’d been developing for nearly 40 years, and suddenly, it was gone. These effects are so severe that even attempting to engage in one of his “B.S.” conversations with some of his colleagues and dear friends from the Clarence community, conversations which were simultaneously about nothing in particular and yet everything possible, are so painful now that he has stopped trying. He has lost his ability to read, to write, to play the guitar, and to speak; the stroke has utterly crushed my father. When he retired in 2012, he did so in order to provide for my mother and her various health complications, some of which are listed below:

1986: diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease (30-day hospitalization)

1989: Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis

1990: Dermatofibroma Sarcoma: right leg/surgery

1990-96: Repeated hospitalizations (varices in throat/Crohn’s flare-ups, jaundice)

1996: Liver Transplant

1996-2017: Crohn’s Attacks

2007: Colectomy at Cleveland Clinic

2007-2009: Abdominal Infections

2009: Repeated wound debridement/fistula upper left abdomen

2009-2013: 2 more fistulae: mid-abdomen

2016: Chronic urinary tract infections, hospitalized with Staph Infection and Pneumonia. Removal of picc line from left arm due to infection-causing blood clot. Catheter placement for urinary incontinence.


On January 24, 2017, my mother was rushed to Buffalo General where we learned that her kidneys were shutting down, and we prepared for the worst. As a result of both my father’s and mother’s health complications, medical bills have been steadily accumulating for over 30 years and have, at this point, financially crippled our family. Whatever the future may hold for my mother, the one thing we can be certain of is more medical bills. My father gave so very much to the community which he loves, that we now turn to that same community and anyone else and ask for donations which may help lesson my family’s economic troubles. In the words of a dear friend of the family, “as your father loved his community, it’s now time for your father to be loved back”. Thank you.



Sincerely,

Joshua Keil