Tubman Benefit

My brother James (Jim) Tubman (age 28) has been married to his wife Stephanie (age 29) for almost 5 years and they have 3 energetic boys – Austin (age 5), Sean (age 2), and Ethan (age 10 months). They learned that Stephanie was pregnant with their 3rd child (Ethan) in October 2006 and bought a house in December 2006 to raise their family in.

Stephanie has had various medical problems for the last 3 years and has been sent to many doctors and specialists, including the Mayo Clinic.

When Stephanie was 9 months pregnant with Ethan, she had severe back pain which she assumed was due to her pregnancy. In July 2007, three weeks after the Ethan was born, she picked him up and a joint in her lower back popped out of her spine and pressed on a nerve that controlled her right leg. She immediately went to see the doctor and they did an emergency lumbar spine surgery.

Family and friends helped out while Stephanie recovered from the surgery by going over to their house and helping take care of the 3 kids. Unfortunately, Stephanie did not heal the way the doctors hoped she would - they discovered that there was a bone in her back that was not supporting her spine the way it was supposed to. They decided that Stephanie needed to have fusion surgery on her lower back in order to fix the problem.

Stephanie was able to go back to work for close to a month working about 10 hours a week and worked up until she had the fusion surgery, which was on December 20th.
With the exception of the month prior to her surgery when she worked 10 hours a week, has been unable to work for over a year. They have overwhelming medical bills which have put them in thousands of dollars in debt and there are still more medical bills coming. Jim had to take out a loan against his 401K in order to support his family so far.

Stephanie went to a rehab clinic and saw Dr. Alison Coulter who told Stephanie that she would be unable to start rehab for a couple of months and then would need to complete 3 months of rehab before she could go back to work.

A few days after their meeting, Alison called Stephanie and asked if she could come over to Stephanie’s house to see her. Stephanie said okay and Alison was at her house an hour later. She told Stephanie that she could tell how tired and frustrated Stephanie was with the whole situation. Alison said that she wanted to resign as Stephanie’s doctor and wanted to help her as a friend instead. Alison now goes over to Jim and Steph’s house every Friday so Stephanie can bring her oldest son, Austin, to preschool and work on her physical therapy.

Stephanie is still recovering from the fusion surgery and has just learned that she may have to have additional extensive surgery because the bone in her spine isn’t growing. It will be 3 months until she finds out if the additional surgery is needed.
If surgery is needed, it will be a minimum 6 months after that before she can go back to work.

Alison has also coordinated a spaghetti dinner and silent auction on June 1st, 2008 at the Coon Rapids VFW to try and help take care of some of their medical bills and mortgage payments in the coming months.

We are in need of donations for their family, exercise equipment, and people to attend the dinner. We are trying to pull the community together to help this struggling family.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or donations please contact us at TubmanBenefit@yahoo.com.
Donations are being accepted at TCF banks by contacting 612-TCF-BANK account Tubman Family Benefit.

Thank you for your time.