The Anderson-Osborne Family needs our help.

Kirsten is a young, active stay-at-home mom to three beautiful children, and a wife to her devoted husband, Nick. They spend time together cooking, gardening, doing fiber arts, and exploring the hills, flowers, and streams of Austin, Texas with their beloved dog, Bear. That came to a rousing pause a few weeks ago.

On Monday, August 14th, Kirsten and her husband drove their children to school. Within an hour and a half of drive time she suddenly and devastatingly lost mobility in both of her legs. Since then, she has been hospitalized for nearly three weeks, with endless teams of doctors, blood tests, body scans, and a weeks-long stay in the conjoined inpatient rehabilitation hospital.

That morning Kirsten got out of the car in a Target parking lot and her legs buckled beneath her. She could not walk. No stranger to pain and weakness due to an ongoing chronic and aggressive autoimmune disease, she hopped in a mobility scooter at the store and continued on her way to buy shoes for her son. She went downhill throughout the day. By the time Kirsten and Nick picked their children up from school that afternoon, Kirsten was now completely immobile in her legs.

She was taken by her husband to an emergency room. After many hours of tests, scans by perplexed doctors, and a poorly placed IV, the hospital decided the problem was beyond their scope. They transferred Kirsten to a state-of-the-art hospital via ambulance. She has been in the hospital ever since.

She was first admitted to the neurology department and then transferred to the Inpatient Rehabilitation Center, where she remains, working to regain mobility and strength. By the time of her anticipated release date, she will have been in the hospital, away from her three children, husband, dog, and job (working weekends with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities) for nearly three long weeks. It has been a long, painful, shocking, and emotional road for Kirsten and her (confused, scared, and sad) family.

The battle does not end for this family upon release. Kirsten will require the sustained use of mobility aids for the rest of her life; including equipment such as a walker and a wheelchair. Her husband, Nick, is installing accessibility devices around their home (a shower bench, handrails, etc.) and is moving her entire primary bedroom downstairs so she can access it. Nick is handling all of this with incredible grace under fire, all while trying to stay on top of his full-time job; their primary source of income.

He has had to take on Kirsten’s responsibilities as a stay-at-home Mom (no easy feat!) which requires a minimum of 500 miles of driving a week for their kids to go to school. In any pocket of free time he can manage, he visits Kirsten at the hospital and learns how to support Kirsten while she adapts to her (their?) new normal.

Kirsten will require outpatient rehabilitation appointments at the hospital multiple times a week upon release. Extensive and ongoing monitoring. Daily appointments with specialists. Pain management. The list goes on.

Ever champions for helping others and of mutual aid, I was finally able to convince Kirsten to receive assistance for her and her family in the same way she gives it to others. Your support helps lessen the already massive financial burden Nick and Kirsten are facing. Please, share this wherever you can. I don’t envy the exhausting, hard-working days that either of them is currently bearing.

This aid will go towards the cost of medical equipment, doctor's visits, supplemental income while she cannot work her weekend job, commuting and transportation, and future unpaid PTO for Nick.

First and foremost, Kirsten has told only family so far. She hates it when people worry about her. I know her well enough to know she’d encourage anyone reading this to go outside and take a walk, to smell the flowers, to roll on the floor with their pup, and to dance with their kiddos instead of spending their time worrying. As a matter of fact, please send her a picture of you doing those things. It would mean the world to her.