Help Zander and his family

Hello- I’m a close family friend of the Neuhaus family for 20 plus years. They are the most loving and giving family that would never ask for help. If anyone has had the pleasure meeting their son Zander you know what a genuine kind young man he is. Since March 5th, 2021 Zander’s has developed many medical conditions that were caused from wearing a mask during his basketball practice resulting in huge medical expenses. This has caused many trips to the hospitals, doctors and travel all over for medical treatments within Michigan as well as out of state. They have already endured huge medical bills and he is currently undergoing Hyperbaric and Neuro feedback treatments. Many of Zander’s treatments aren’t all covered under his medical insurance. He has a long road ahead with further medical treatments and we are praying he gets some relief of his pain soon. I know this family would be grateful for anything you could contribute. In case you haven’t heard of Zander’s story here it is from a mothers heart, Richelle:

We got our answers yesterday. I thought it would be a sigh of relief, but this fire it has created inside of me tells me that this fight has just begun. From this day forward my life will be devoted to fighting for my son and every other student athlete in the state of Michigan.

The proof is on paper. For almost the last 11 months we have spent all of our efforts trying to fix a muscle spasm in Zander's head that loudly pounds all day. It started after he collapsed when he got home from basketball practice on March 5th, 2021. We've consulted with doctors in Michigan and around the country. We've thought that the severe exploding head pain that he has been suffering everyday has been from the loud noise from a spasm. We've spent time trying to find underlying causes that would explain how our healthy 16 year old, straight A student could go from thriving and excelling and anticipating going to college to play one of his favorite sports, to living a life of daily excruciating pain where it is difficult for him to function many days. He had to go to online high school and college classes because of his pain. He has an aviation course in person and has around 35 absences because of his bad days. This pain that he is suffering has literally left him wanting to die on several occasions. THIS is a level of pain that no child or parent should ever have to endure. If you have never been through it, you really can't understand that kind of pain and words really can't describe it. The only thing that has gotten us through this is God stepping in and taking the reigns when we've had no strength left. He's shown his face in this so many times in such breathtaking ways that we know he has this wrapped in his hands.

Yesterday we got the tests back that show that his explosive head pain is not from the spasm. His pain is from a severe head injury. We saw so many signs of a brain injury this past 11 months, but we were missing one key piece of the puzzle. How does an athlete get a severe head injury without any kind of blow to the head? Let me tell you--- You take a negligent woman and allow her to place mandates over an entire state, and allow her to tell us that it's safe to place a mask over an athlete's face while they are running.

I knew the practice was an intense practice that day on March 5th. They usually were, but this practice they had lost the game the day before, so they had to run extra killers that day. We had always told our kids not to wear the masks while running because we knew it wasn't safe. At games most of the players had the masks under their chins. They were not enforced because it isn't possible. We need oxygen to live! So this particular day, I recently found out that since the AD/asst. principal was around, the coach told the team they had to wear their masks up.

ONE DAY, ONE PRACTICE, ONE GOVERNOR, ONE COACH--following rules to the extreme, have stolen so much from my son. "Hypoxia" is a term that I want every parent of an athlete or any student forced to wear a mask to be very aware of. The human brain will die after 5 minutes without oxygen. Any reduction in the oxygen supply to the brain for any period of time can start causing brain damage quickly. The imbalance of not enough oxygen and too much carbon dioxide being breathed in that day caused my son a severe migraine, made him vomit, and then collapse where his sister found him on the floor. All of this then rolled into hearing loss, balance issues, high blood pressure in the 150's, the myclonus spasm and brain swelling that shuts his life down. This spasm that they originally said was rare isn't rare at all with patients who have had their oxygen supply cut off to the brain. People who suffer heart attacks and people who are in comas get myoclonus spasms all the time because their oxygen was lowered or cut off.

Once we went back to several doctors and told them that he had a mask on that day more tests were ordered and they quickly started treating him for cerebral hypoxia, and that is why he had been going to have hyperbaric oxygen treatments daily. I am so grateful that God has opened these doors and that we can now treat him and pray for rapid progress.

We have spent 4+ hours a day getting him to hyperbaric oxygen and neurofeedback treatments. They had to lower the pressure the other day. His head pressure went up and when we were hoping for progress, he was back in bed with a pillow over his head. They said with hypoxic brain swelling and the ischemia that comes with it, that these patients have a hard time with any increase in pressure because the pressure in their head is already so high. The other night after treatments his ENT at Beaumont let him come in to get tubes put in at the end of the day. He also had another 4 injections of a total of 30 units of botox in the roof of his mouth to try to stop the spasm. Now the top of his head feels like its going to explode, the botox can cause its own speech and swallowing regurgitation issues, his ears spasming is causing the tubes and the hole in his eardrums to hurt and his throat hurts from the botox. Zander is enduring hell on earth right now......all while fighting through with more endurance than I have seen anyone have to fight before. Fighting through to maintain his GPA, unable to test for scholarships, overcoming the realization that his senior year and his dreams are quickly passing him by. The sports that he had played and excelled at have been stripped from him, holiday parties, family events, things he could do without ever thinking about before have been robbed from him. Like I've said before, at first we were fighting in hopes to get him back to doing what he loves. Now our focus is to get him a pain free day where he feels normal.

Parents, please do your research. I have written and rewritten Zander's story to share with the world so that this doesn't happen to anyone else. I will be finishing that up and sharing on a separate page soon with some resources and further information. But for today, I am exhausted and will leave this here.

I turn the ones in authority responsible for what has happened to our son over to the creator of the universe. He has way more power to handle you than I ever could. He is a God of JUSTICE, and the only ONE worthy to give and take away breath. I have full faith that God will continue opening doors and opening our eyes to things overlooked. I know he will take care of Zander and will restore and multiply these precious years that have been stolen. Thank you for listening to his story and please feel free to share as we want as many people to know as we can to stop this.