Web site a solid source of support for family of injured chiropractor
Friday, August 15, 2008 11:30 PM PDT
By Thacher Schmid
Printable version
E-mail this articleJoelle Holdahl is dealing with her husband’s injury by putting on a happy face — and she doesn’t care if people think she should be miserable.
“I don’t see it necessary to stay like in a somber state, and he can’t heal when I’m like that, and I’m a mom anyways,” she said. “I can’t not laugh. Who wants to try to recover in a room where everybody’s so sad?”
Her husband, Woodland chiropractor Jason Holdahl, broke two vertebrae in his neck July 12 diving into the Columbia River off Sauvie Island. The couple has no insurance to pay for medical bills that family friend Kim Bailor said are well over $1 million. Dr. Holdahl moved out of Intensive Care Aug. 3, but remains on a ventilator and is faced with relearning life’s most basic activities, including breathing and swallowing.
She said she has private moments with a few “f bombs” and tears.
But the situation has engendered hope and an outpouring of support from the community and around the world. Tuesday, Holdahl ate his first real food since the accident. The family’s Web site, jasonholdahlrecovery.com, has had 16,000 unique visitors from 23 countries, Bailor said.
The sizeable online traffic is a testament to Joelle Holdahl’s brutally honest, highly emotional posts:
“Fear and sadness can kick in and breathe so deep into me, that I would like to sleep for days,” she wrote Friday at 4:30 a.m. “I try to express the ups as best I can. It’s the downs that keep me from posting for a few days. Because the downs are gigantic, almost deeper than expression allows. ... So throughout my day of smiling and feeling like a fraud, while I danced ‘poor me’ in my mind, Jason was up. He shined all day through.”
“Tonight, he held my hand and said, ‘We will have a good life again, it’s just going to take time and I’m going to work hard.’”
At first, Joelle Holdahl said, her husband communicated by mouthing words, with no sound. “I’ve gotten pretty good at reading his mouth,” she said. Lately, his voice is a whisper.
The recovery Web site, which has a message board and Paypal donation form, has been an unexpected blessing.
“I think it’s kind of neat what it’s evolved to,” Joelle Holdahl said. “It’s still kind of a hard concept to grasp, how many people look at it. We started it because the phones were just ringing off the hook.”
A benefit fundraiser will be held Thursday in Woodland, even as bills keep piling up. The total raised so far is less than a tenth what’s owed.
“Not even close (to $100,000),” said Bailor, who helps manage the Web site. “Every little bit is appreciated and helps.”
Joelle Holdahl said she remains firmly fixed on the here and now.
“It’s kind of hard to focus on the end product in our situation, if you don’t know where the end is,” she said.
Local event
A benefit dinner and silent auction will be held from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 21 at Woodland Intermediate School, 2250 Lewis River Road. For more information go to jasonholdahlrecovery.com.
whatsinaname wrote on Aug 16, 2008 12:34 AM:
Doug McCratch wrote on Aug 16, 2008 9:09 AM:
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