‘A nightmare': Teen paralyzed after dirt bike crash keeping the faith during recovery
'They were just riding around, and he, at one point, took the lead, and it was kind of close to where this ditch was,' Therese said. 'And the second boy, seeing that he was headed for the ditch did try to let him know that it was there was obscured by the grass, but he couldn't hear because of the dirt bike, and he had his helmet on and all of his gear on.'
Christian went into the ditch.
'It was about a maybe eight to 10 foot drainage ditch,' Therese said. 'And [my son's friend] went down and helped him and got his phone, and Christian was able to give him his password to get into his phone, and he called me and my husband, but we didn't answer the phone. So then he called 911, and he gave them like excellent directions. So they were able to get to Christian very quickly with in just a couple minutes.'
Christian was airlifted by first responders to SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. There, he underwent emergency surgery.
'He had broken his spine in the T7 and T8 area, and with a complete transection of his spinal cord,' Therese said. 'So, they did emergency surgery and stabilized him there, and he's just been like recuperating here.'
Therese told News 8 Wednesday when she was able to get ahold of her daughter and first responders, it was terrifying.
'It's just like your life is like panic, and you just fall apart in that moment, trying not to, trying to be strong,' she said. 'The only thing I could think of is I've got to get to my child as soon as possible, you know, because he needs me.'
The unimaginable challenges brought on to the Testorf family, all being received with hope — especially from Chrisitan.
'My son's attitude […] somebody asked him, 'How do you feel?' This is going to change your life.' And he said, 'I'm okay with it. I've accepted it. I know God's with me, so that's what gives me strength,' Therese said. 'And I think that's what could give other people strength in this situation, is knowing that people love you and support you, and most of all, that God is always with you, and He will never leave you or forsake you.'
The family has also received the community's support, after setting up a GiveSendGo, to help with medical expenses for the necessary steps to get Christian into rehabilitation.
'Having people around that are positive and that are helping is amazing,' Therese said. 'It just helps your your mental state, and helps you to be able to continue in this… it's like, basically a nightmare. I've thought about this stuff before this happened, and I was like, 'I don't even know how people do it.' And now that I'm in it, they do it with the help of God and with people surrounding them and supporting them.'
Christian was just weeks away from graduation from Finger Lakes Christian School. With the help of the staff, he will still be able to celebrate that achievement.
'The very first day that after his surgery, his principal came in and he said, 'We want to do a ceremony for him for his graduation. He's got everything he needs. All the ducks are in the row. The district's already approved our plan. […] That's going to be Friday.'
After that, Christian will be headed to Spaulding Rehabilitation in Boston. Therese said everything is moving quickly, but wanted to make sure her son received the best care possible.
'He's young and a strong person,' Therese said. 'They do believe that he's going to be able to live independently, and that it's going to be a good outcome for him. So that's what we're all praying for.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
My Cousin And I Exchanged Thousands Of Texts Before She Died — But I Never Asked The 1 Question I Should Have
I lived in fear of my cousin Tarlie's death for more than seven years. When the text arrived from my aunt, Tarlie's mom, my husband and I had put our children to bed and were sitting outside on our patio. 'She just passed. It was peaceful and her dad and I were both at her bedside when it happened.' Tarlie died on Memorial Day, shortly after her 31st birthday. When she was 23, she was diagnosed with a form of melanoma so aggressive but benign looking that three dermatologists were fooled by its appearance, and by the time it was recognized, it was too late. Melanoma spreads through the bloodstream and lymph nodes, moving so painlessly and invisibly that it can metastasize for a long time before anyone knows. Related: As I read my aunt's text, a rush of hot, electric energy ran through me. I felt my consciousness rise out of my body and then crash back down. I cried while clutching my heart as if it might fall out and shatter. I remembered how much Tarlie wanted to live for her parents and herself. She told me her two big fears were her own suffering before death and the suffering of her mother and father. 'Odds are I will die in the coming year of a long, excruciating death, leaving two miserable parents behind,' she had texted. As I sat outside in the dimming summer light, alive in the world that no longer held my beloved cousin, I wept and agonized over how to respond to my aunt. 'Crying for your loss and Uncle Jim's,' I wrote. 'You're such an amazing mom. Thank you for raising such an incredible human being. I love her so much and will all my life.' It was fitting Aunt Lisa's and my first words together after Tarlie's death were via text messages. In the years after her diagnosis, Tarlie and I sent each other more than 850 pages of texts. Our phone calls often lasted up to two hours, which was a time commitment we couldn't always make, but we could text from anywhere at any time. We texted when Tarlie found an unusual lump on her stomach while traveling with her mom in Madagascar, more than four years after her initial diagnosis. We texted a few weeks later after a doctor told her the melanoma had advanced to stage IV, the final stage. We texted as she waited in an airport security line a few days later, flying from her home in New York City to her Indiana hometown to tell her parents in person. Later, we texted as she lay in a hospital bed struggling to breathe through the side effects of immunotherapy, waiting to see if she'd need to be intubated. 'If I die, I want to just die and not know it,' she wrote before pulling through that particular time. But even though Tarlie and I talked frequently about her potentially dying young, I sometimes felt like a hypocrite. Intellectually, I knew she could die. She had asked me to sit on the phone with her several times while she opened terrifying test results. I understood the realities of her prognosis. Related: Still, I chose to believe she would live. I loved her so much that I knew I could never prepare for the pain of losing her. When I was a child, I prayed I would never outlive any of my siblings, and I loved Tarlie like a sister. If she died, my first great fear would come true. I also worried it would kill her parents. Tarlie is Aunt Lisa's only child and the love of her life. Because I chose to believe Tarlie would live, I never asked her the questions that scared me the most: What did she want me to do if the cancer killed her? What kind of responsibilities would she ask me to fulfill for her? What would she want me to do to support her parents? The day after Tarlie died, Aunt Lisa asked me to come back to Indiana for a small service. Tarlie chose to have her remains composted — turning her body into rich soil, reimagining her place in the world she loved so much — so she would be in Seattle with a green funeral home by the time I arrived. But her parents and many of her closest loved ones would be in her childhood home. 'I know it's last minute, so I understand if you can't come,' Aunt Lisa said. 'I'm coming,' I told her. 'Good,' she replied as we both began to cry. 'Good.' Technically, Aunt Lisa and I aren't related by blood. Tarlie and I are related through our fathers, who are brothers. But Tarlie and I loved each other as cousin-sisters. In some photos, Tarlie, my sisters and I look like full siblings, with our dark brown eyes and broad foreheads. What, then, does that make her mother to me? I flew into Indianapolis that weekend. My family had visited my aunt and uncle's house when we were children, but I hadn't been back in more than 20 years. In my mind, Tarlie's Barbie electric car would still be waiting for her in the long driveway. The leather armchair in the living room would still be cartoonishly large. Tarlie would be in her pink bedroom. 'I'm here, love,' I whispered. 'I'm coming to be with your mom and dad and partner and we're going to love on you.' The Midwestern sky was broad over the flat land as I drove an hour on the interstate from the airport to Aunt Lisa's house. I thought about my cousin under that big sky and the bright sun pouring down on her, helping her grow up to be brilliant and kind, while also invisibly sowing the seeds of cancer on her cheek. I arrived at the house already crying. Aunt Lisa emerged from around the path of the house to the deck. In some ways, Tarlie's fears had come to pass. She had suffered uncontrollable pain before she died, and her death devastated her parents. But her mother and I were still here, hugging in front of the house where Tarlie grew up and spent some of her last days. Tarlie's memory was alive inside us both, beyond even the reach of DNA and death. Related: The memorial service was scheduled for Saturday afternoon. That morning, Aunt Lisa and I curled up across from each other on the leather couch where Tarlie sat so many times. I told her a lesson I had learned from another bereaved parent: When a child dies, many people will avoid mentioning them for fear of hurting the parents. But often, their child is all the parents want to talk about. 'You can call me any time,' I said. 'I'll always want to talk about Tarlie.' As we moved through the day, I kept waiting to hear Tarlie's laugh from the next room. In her house, time felt like a thin veil. I wanted to reach through it and pull her back to us. Before the other visitors began to arrive, I went upstairs to the guest room, changed into a black dress and wrote down notes for the remarks I wanted to give at the memorial. As I was walking back down the hallway, Aunt Lisa peeked her head out of her bedroom door. 'Could you help me with something?' she asked. 'I'm trying to figure out what to wear. Tarlie was my fashion adviser.' It was a sacred request. During our family visits as a child, I never went in my aunt and uncle's bedroom. It was too private, too full of personal, fragile things. Now I was standing in Aunt Lisa's closet, looking up at a painting of Tarlie with a purple flower behind her ear and wishing she were here. In another universe, Tarlie would be the one standing where I was. Aunt Lisa would be helping her dress for the wedding she would never have, the baby shower that would never be thrown. Mother and daughter in their sanctum. 'I want to wear these pants.' Aunt Lisa pointed to the loose navy pair she had on. 'They're very comfortable, but I'm not sure about the shirt. How about this gray one?' 'Something isn't totally working,' I said. 'The colors are kind of clashing.' 'What about this dress?' She moved to another row in her closet and grabbed a hanger. 'Can you zip me up?' 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After Tarlie's body was composted, Aunt Lisa took the fertile soil to build a garden in front of her home and filled it with native plants that draw butterflies and bees to pollinate the land that raised her daughter. She lovingly tends it all year round. On what would have been Tarlie's 34th birthday, her close friends wished her a happy birthday in the WhatsApp group that Tarlie created years ago to update us on the cancer's progression. We stay in community with each other and the earth she loved. It would make her happy to know that we try to live the values that meant so much to her. I never asked Tarlie what she wanted me to do if she died young. But as we texted and talked from a Madagascar hotel to a New York hospital bed, she was teaching herself and me how to live with the despair and hope of an uncertain future. To be afraid of the pain but remain present with the ones we love. To be overwhelmed by a mixture of agonizing grief and boundless gratitude for that miraculous love. To keep showing up for the ones left behind. To live in ways that honor the courage and compassion Tarlie brought to the world. Virgie Townsend is the award-winning author of the short story collection 'Because We Were Christian Girls,' inspired by her own experiences growing up and leaving Christian fundamentalism. She has written for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Sun Magazine, Harper's Bazaar and other outlets. You can find her online at Do you have a compelling personal story you'd like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we're looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@ Related... My Husband Died Abroad. As I Boarded The Plane Home, A Flight Attendant's Innocent Comment Broke Me. After My Wife Died, I Found A 4-Word Text Message In Her Phone That Hit Me Like A Sledgehammer I Was Devastated When The Love Of My Life Died. 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Boston Globe
5 days ago
- Boston Globe
Costco will not sell abortion pills after pressure from conservatives
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NBC News
5 days ago
- NBC News
Mother with cerebral palsy struggles to hire aides after private equity takeover
Renee Christian, a single mom with cerebral palsy, lives in Buffalo, New York, with her 12-year-old daughter. Although her condition forced her to spend most of her childhood at a nursing home, she has resided in her own home for years with the help of personal assistants she hires under a New York State Medicaid program. In April, however, Christian's life was upended when the state forced her and her assistants to work with a new company administering the nation's largest consumer-directed personal assistance program, called CDPAP. One by one, she lost nearly half her assistants because they said they did not receive the proper pay for their work, Christian said. She now fears for her future living at home where she needs help getting dressed, doing laundry and cooking meals. 'I'm trying to hire new staff, and I am very good at navigating technology,' Christian, 37, said. 'But it's hard when you have to tell your new hires, 'I can't guarantee you're going to get paid on time or get the appropriate amount of hours.'' Christian is not the only one affected by the state program's recent takeover. NBC News spoke with nineconsumers and personal assistants who described multiple problems since Public Partnerships LLC (PPL) won the $1 billion, five-year contract in 2024, replacing roughly 600 entities that had been administering the program. The issues range from assistants receiving checks for zero dollars to problems arranging for direct deposit, onboarding new workers and clocking hours worked. PPL, which has a staff of 1,400 on the New York program, is owned by two private equity firms. Its takeover as the program's sole administrator triggered an avalanche of complaints from consumers unable to reach anyone to answer questions and assistants unpaid for hours they worked and unhappy with reduced health insurance benefits, according to lawmakers, consumer advocates and the consumers and assistants interviewed by NBC News. Before the transition to PPL, roughly 280,000 consumers were participating in the CDPAP program, according to the New York Department of Health. Since PPL took over, some 80,000 have left the program, the department said. 'A lot of these folks need the services being provided by the program,' Gustavo Rivera, a New York state senator who represents constituents in the Bronx, told NBC News. 'It's likely they dropped out because of difficulties making the program work or they switched to programs that are more expensive.' Rivera has scheduled hearings in August about what he calls the botched transition to PPL. At a cost of $9 billion a year, New York's CDPAP is the largest personal assistance program in the nation. It allows consumers like Christian to directly hire the folks who help them pursue their lives rather than rely on a staffing agency. At-home programs like New York's are less costly than providing institutional care, research shows. In 2024, according to one analysis, a semi-private room in a nursing home cost an average $9,277 a month nationwide. That's 43% more than a home health aide costing on average $6,483 each month. Amanda Lothrop, chief operating officer for New York State's Medicaid program, told NBC News that the transition to PPL aimed to eliminate the former program's administrative inefficiencies while protecting taxpayers. She said fraud and abuse had marred the previous program, but the state has identified very few cases. A 2022 audit by the Office of Medicaid Inspector General in New York, for example, uncovered only $46,000 in overpayments in the program, a 99% accuracy rate. In response to questions from NBC News, PPL and the New York state health department said together they had identified 30 instances of home care workers under the previous system billing consumers who were hospitalized or dead, five cases of workers billing for work with consumers who were out of the country, one worker claiming to work for two people at the same time and another who claimed to be in two places simultaneously. More than 200,000 workers are in the CDPAP program. 'In partnership with PPL,' the department of health said in a statement, it 'is using enhanced data and monitoring tools to protect program integrity, support consumers, and take timely action when issues arise.' Meg Fitzgerald, a PPL spokeswoman, said in a statement that the company's 'systems and centralized control processes would have been able to identify and prevent these violations.' The contract New York State awarded to PPL is a recent example of private equity's increasing involvement in home health care, said Aditi Sen, managing director of research and campaigns at Americans for Financial Reform, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization that advocates for fairness in the U.S. financial system. Last month, Sen published a report detailing the industry's forays into home health care entitled, 'Wall Street on Your Doorstep: Protecting Home Care from Private Equity Abuses.' 'The private equity industry is looking for any streams of steady public funding,' Sen said in an interview. 'As advocates have secured more funding for home and community-based services, that has resulted in the private equity encroachment.' She said the next step for researchers is to analyze the quality of home care after private equity gets involved. Founded in 1999, PPL calls itself an industry leader 'in financial management services for consumer direction, serving consumers throughout the U.S.' As for the difficulties in the New York program, the PPL spokeswoman said in a statement: 'The transition to a single fiscal intermediary required a significant element of education and, in some cases, a change in practices for submitting and approving time. We have been committed to providing various methods of extensive education and resources to all stakeholders. Ultimately, we strive to provide the accountability this program deserves.' Three CEOs in five years Private equity firms have taken over wide swaths of the health care industry in recent years and ill effects on care have been well-documented in independent academic research. The firms typically acquire companies or doctors' practices using debt and hope to sell them within five to seven years at a profit. This requires the firms to improve the financial results of the companies they buy, often firing employees or cutting services to slash costs. The private equity firms bought PPL three years ago. Studies on hospitals and nursing homes have found significant deterioration in patient outcomes after private equity takes them over. Other research has found that prices rise significantly after private equity acquires a practice or operation. According to Sen, private equity firms have rolled up hundreds of small home health and home care chains into large companies like Comfort Keepers, Help at Home and Accentcare. Combined, private equity-owned companies offering home and community-based care services are second only in size to chains owned by insurers Humana and UnitedHealthcare, Sen found. Many acquisitions by private equity-owned chains have been in companies offering home and community-based services for people with physical, intellectual and developmental disabilities, Sen determined. Pediatric home care for children with disabilities is another area of interest as is the consumer self-directed care industry, PPL's focus. Private equity acquisitions are not always easy to track. PPL's website does not identify its owners, but a recent court ruling disclosed the two private equity firms that control it — DW Healthcare Partners of Toronto and Park City, UT, and Linden Capital Partners of Chicago. Although both the firms' websites list other companies they have invested in, neither lists PPL as an investment. After winning the New York State contract, PPL tried to keep its ownership secret. In a lawsuit filed last year against New York's Department of Health by a home care company over the transition to PPL, the company's private equity owners were identified in a document that PPL requested the judge keep under seal. If the information were made public, the company argued, it 'may put individuals in danger and/or allow them to become targets of violence.' Public disclosure would also increase the risk of 'unwanted attention and harassment,' PPL said. The company lost that battle and the document became public. Fitzgerald, PPL's spokeswoman, declined to elaborate on the company's desire for secrecy in its ownership. Neither DW Healthcare nor Linden Capital Partners responded to emails seeking comment for this story. PPL also objected to a 2024 Medicare rule affecting home care organizations. The rule mandated that at least 80% of Medicaid payments go to compensation for direct care workers, such as personal assistants, not a company's 'administrative overhead or profit.' Fitzgerald said the company's objections were not about worker compensation. Rather, she said, the company believed the rule would 'make it more difficult for states to initiate new self-directed programs and to maintain small self-directed programs.' Participants in the CDPAP program aren't the only ones experiencing upheaval in the transition to PPL. Recently, Vince Coppola, PPL's former chief executive, and Maria Perrin, its former president, departed unexpectedly. PPL has had three CEOs over the past five years, Fitzgerald said. Filling out forms for hours Tara Murphy said she enjoyed working as a personal assistant in the CDPAP program for 25 years. But when she tried to switch to PPL, she encountered multiple difficulties, she said. 'Their technology is so hard to navigate, it took me four and a half hours to fill out their forms,' she recalled. 'I uploaded them nine times before they were finally accepted in their system.' Murphy's hourly pay with PPL was 2% less than she had previously earned, she said, and she never received the correct pay under the new program. 'I ended up having to quit my job and leave my consumer,' she said. Rivera, the New York state senator, said he hopes to gain some answers from state officials on the PPL transition at the Aug. 21 hearings in New York City he co-sponsored with state Sen. James Skoufis. 'Last year, when it was pushed upon us in the budget process I said back then that I thought it was a bad idea,' Rivera said of the switch to PPL. 'Unfortunately, what I heard from my constituents is the transition was indeed bungled.' Meanwhile, Christian, the Buffalo mom who has lost five personal assistants since PPL took over, is especially worried about how it might impact her daughter. 'My daughter is 12 years old, she needs me here for her,' Christian told NBC News. 'If I have to go into a facility because I can't get care in my home, where is she going to go?'
