Richard and Cindy Lasser's medical bills

Hello, my name is Jessee Lasser and I am Richard and Cindy's oldest child. I wanted to share a bit of their story with everyone and ask for you all to reach into your kind hearts and see if there is any financial support you could offer in these tough times to help them get reestablished after this tragedy.

On February 2nd, 2023 in the early AM, my father Richard drove across the state of Florida to pick up my mother from a wedding that had ended near Fort Lauderdale. (they live closer to Tampa) It was a very foggy morning (almost zero visibility) and when they were traveling on an older one-lane highway, they rear-ended a semi-trailer head-on that was turning right going roughly 60MPH. As you could imagine, the damage to their vehicle was significant and they both were rushed via ambulance to a nearby hospital in Fort Pierce, FL, some 2.5 hours from their home. Richard's side of the vehicle took the brunt of the damage, the onsite team needed to cut him out of the vehicle, as the driver's side of their van caved in on him, crushing the left side of his body in the process. My mother and their sweet doggie Isabella were both also in the vehicle that day, my mother suffered a laundry list of injuries and somehow Isabella walked away unscathed.

After they were stabilized and assessed there, it was told to us that these were the injuries for each of them;

Cindy: 4-5 broken ribs, broken collar bone, fractured hip, multiple lacerations on her head that needed staples and internal bleeding.

Richard: Severe damage to his left leg and arm, which led to his leg needing to be amputated from the knee down, his left arm needing to have metal put in and rebuilt from the elbow out, damage to his left kidney, damage to his bladder, lacerations to his head, broken teeth, he suffered a small stroke in his sleep early on, etc.

This journey of getting my mother back to healthy has been a much better story than my father's, she was treated and released from the Fort Pierce hospital roughly 2 weeks after the accident into a local rehab facility, where she spent another 1.5 weeks, then finally released for home. She was able to reunite with their dog Isabella who missed home and her parents dearly. She still has some PTSD with driving, but overall she is doing much better physically and is excited to have Richard home again soon.

My father's journey has been much more of a novel;

After 4 weeks of non-stop surgeries and cleaning wounds in Fort Pierce, he was brought via ambulance to a hospital near Miami where his remaining surgeries were to be done by specialists that were in his insurance network. This hospital is roughly 5.5 hours from their home, so a very long and expensive ambulance trip... It was decided after about 2 weeks of being there that his leg had such bad bone damage/loss that the amputation of the left leg would be the safest and best route for him to go. The hospital there did that surgery and that is healing well overall. He spent in total about 3 weeks there before being transferred by ambulance to a rehab facility near their home, another 5.5-hour ambulance trip. In the rehab facility things went well, he was sent home after a week. Then once he was home, he had in-care nurses coming over every 2 days. Once home we thought all was good and the journey to his new normal was upon us, only to learn that he had an infection in his left arm/elbow and metal protruding out of his skin, he was rushed via ambulance back into a local hospital near their home. The team locally there found that because the internal metal in his arm was exposed, they had to replace all of that again. This surgery was done on 4/3/23 and then got infected two days after the surgery. They changed the meds, upped the dosages and the infection improved.

As of today 4/10/23, he is clear of the infections in his arm/elbow, his leg is healing well overall and his spirits are high in anticipation of this lengthy journey finally coming to an end and the 3 of them being able to be at home together as a family. He is still in the local Lakeland hospital in good hands and we are awaiting word on the next steps this week; it will either be in-patient rehab there or discharged back home with a blend of in-home nurses and rehab they need to bring him back and forth to.

Their home setup is a little tight logistically; we are unable to build a wheelchair ramp for him in this space, so we are transitioning into planning for a wheelchair lift, which we will need to purchase, as insurance does not cover these. I have found some good options around the $2,000 -$3,000 range, which is the next step for me to help get their home space set up for him to get in and out, for both pleasure and rehab visits.

I wanted to call out and thank all of you that have them in your prayers, please keep them there as I believe in prayer and we value all of it!! God is amazing and I believe they are still with us today due to His grace and everyone's prayers!

Please feel free to email me with any further questions or concerns about their story or what help could be needed, I also can/will provide more pictures if you would like.

Any support you can offer or afford would be greatly appreciated and 100% of the financial gifts will go towards both retrofitting their home for him and assisting with medical bills.

Thank you and god bless, the Lasser family!