Hope4JD event brings much success
Ment Morris and Ali Davidson performed at this year’s Hope4JD charity event. The event was created to help kids who suffer from an injury caled hypoxic/anoxic brain injury and who have financial problems and cannot afford treatment.
It was on a typical Saturday, the Hartman’s family experienced a terrible event. JD Hartman was a happy, loving 11-year-old boy that had three sisters and two parents that loved him very much.
However on October 2008, things changed when he was playing near their pool, according to JD’s dad, John Hartman.
“He was at the bottom so I pulled him out and performed CPR,” John said.
The family thought it would be nothing major since they got him out alive, but that was not the case.
JD was rushed to the hospital immediately after the accident. There, the Hartman family was told that JD had experienced something called hypoxic/anoxic brain injury (HAI) and is due to the lack of oxygen in the brain.
HAI essentially disrupts oxygen flow, starving the brain and preventing it from performing biochemical processes.
JD was in the hospital for five months and was in a coma for one year.
“One hard part is realizing you don’t have control over everything kids do,” his mother Beth Hartman said.
Approximately 6,000 children ages under-21 suffered from a non-fatal drowning in the United States in 2011. The recovery for this type of injury is difficult, if not impossible.
Untreated children with severe brain damage progressively deteriorate. Their bodies deform and they are susceptible to serious illness such as pneumonia.
The medical cost for HAI can be up to $180,000 a year for long-term care. The emotional,physical and financial strain of caring for a disabled child takes an enormous toll on families.
The Hartman family has experienced this, so over the time they have organized a charity called “Hope4JD” to support families of children who suffer from that injury.
Hope4JD provides support through financial and recovery-based support services to families that are having a problem such as they were.
Now time has passed and JD has a completely different life.
“We have learned to love the other and new part of JD,” John said.
Now JD’s life is different, he takes therapy and has to have liquid meals every day. He has to eat through a feeding tube and that is how he gets his vitamins.
JD is currently attending Bowie High School as a sophomore.
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