Patriots Fan Jeff Fuller EEE Victim Thread

[PATSNUTme]

Here is the latest update post by frankw dated 1/22/11

Well we've finally got some good news to report. I got a text on Thursday from Maureen saying that Jeff was having a great day, almost as good a day as he was having just before Christmas. I called her and she told me he had just had a good OT session, catching a ball that they were throwing to him. Reaching out for the ball and having good movement and coordination in both arms. He also had a good speech therapy session. Answering most of the questions correctly and the ones he was unsure on, he quickly gave the correct answer with a a hint or two. They also brought him some stuff to eat. Ground up London broil, which Jeff said was "horrible." They also had some butternut squash, which was "gross." And some mashed potatoes that were "OK." The speech therapist also approved him to start eating soft foods, meaning anything you can cut with a fork. So he can start having some real food now.

After speech therapy Maureen took out the laptop and asked him if he wanted to look at some pictures. She gave him the laptop and they started to look through them. Jeff put his finger on the correct mouse button and clicked his way through the pictures. Maureen also said he identified most of the people in the pictures.

I don't know how yesterday went, but he had another great day today. My phone rang a couple hours ago and it was was Jeff on the other end. We had a quick conversation told him it looked like Green Bay was in and Jeff agreed and I then said I couldn't believe I'd be rooting for the Steelers later tonight, he replied "yeah, I know." I had a hard time hearing/understand everything he said, but it was good to talk to him.

His brother went in to see him this morning and I guess they had a good visit. Later when Maureen arrived to visit she asked how his brother was, he replied "large and in charge," which definitely describes Jeff's brother.

Please continue to keep Jeff in your thoughts and prayers and lets hope this is the start of a long series of positive news.

 

[jmt57]

Besides the article, there is also a video in the link below.

Family Of EEE Patient Fighting To Keep Insurance Coverage | CBS Boston | 2/10/2011

Jeffrey Fuller’s wife Maureen is amazed he’s regained the mobility to catch the balloon their children toss him in a video she made. He was comatose only six months ago, when tests confirmed he had Eastern Equine Encephalitis, Triple E, from a mosquito bite in southeastern Massachusetts, somewhere between Middleboro and Wareham. EEE can cause potentially deadly inflammation of the brain.

Now, Maureen Fuller is upset because she says Blue Cross Blue Shield no longer wants to pay for him to stay at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, citing a lack of progress.

“They told me that they don’t feel he’s making the gains that they feel necessary for him to stay here,” she said, adding Blue Cross Blue Shield did not specify the gains they require.

Maureen has been battling with the health care insurer since November after she filed a grievance with them.

“I was told that his discharge date was today,” she said in an interview outside his room Thursday. “We don’t have a facility to send him to at this point…for almost twenty years, my husband’s paid his insurance premiums, hoping that we’d never really have to use them like this.”

“There is no criteria for Triple E and I just don’t understand how someone could do that for a living and play God with my son’s life,” said Fred Fuller, Jeffrey’s father.

Maureen said a case worker at Spaulding helped her appeal to state officials Wednesday.

“He’s made incredible progress…I can’t say enough good things about the facility here.”

She also has great confidence in the toughness of Jeff himself, an avid outdoors man, and said his doctors have been surprised by his progress.

“The doctors may know medicine but they don’t know my husband,” said Maureen.

“He’s gone from comatose to almost standing up,” said Fred Fuller.

 

[PATSNUTme]

Boy, what a shame. This family has been through hell and now to put them through this is awful.

I wish Jeff and his family the best of luck and lets all pray that BC&BS has a change of heart on this. Many of us know first had how life can change in a second. We see this in our own family and friend. We lose someone unexpectedly, someone close to us comes down with a serious illness.

It should make us all appreciate what we have and every day that we have good health. Our petty worries and problems are nothing compared to something like this.

 

[PATSNUTme]

BTW, if anyone here is from Jeff's district and know of the State Rep or State Senator, please post the email of that person. Maybe we can start a little email campaign to that person to put some pressure on BC&BS.

 

[Deus Irae]

Thanks for the update, and I sure hope BC&BS step up on this one.

 

[Sciz]

Wow, I can't believe they would do that. I'll be sure to send extra prayers Jeff's way.

 

[sevengables_2207]

Prayers go out to Jeff and his family/friends. Hopefully, they get the insurance issues resolved and he can continue making steady progress with his therapy.

 

[RoadGrader]

BTW, if anyone here is from Jeff's district and know of the State Rep or State Senator, please post the email of that person. Maybe we can start a little email campaign to that person to put some pressure on BC&BS.

I visited Jeff just 60 days ago at Spaulding and the improvement he has made since then as evidenced in the TV4 video is remarkable

while Jeff's family is in an appeal process w/ BC/BS you can show them your support for Jeff's continuing care at Spaulding by visiting this Facebook page

One Million Strong for Jeff Fuller

Show your support by simply liking this page

thanks for taking time to read this & hopefully show your support

RoadGrader

 

[Its_The_Patriots]

The big positive in all this is how his recovery is going. I wish him and his family all the best. I will say prayer for them as well.

 

[DaBruinz]

RoadGrader - Thank you for posting the FB page.. I've like it and asked that other Pats fans show their support as well..

I hope that Jeff continues to get the help that he needs and that Maureen continues to have the strength to fight the BS Bureaucracy known as BCBS.

If they can't provide reasonable guidelines as to what the recovery time should be, then how can they determine that he's not made adequate headway???

Friggin insurance companies... And they wonder why people hate them.

 

[PATSNUTme]

Some of the insurance companies use a a medical evaluation service, that they call independent, who review the patients medical reports. This is just a cover to deny or discontinue benefits.

This happened to me after shoulder surgery. They tried to cut off PT before the shoulder was ready and had achieved the maximum ROM. They used a cookie cutter evaluation and did not take into consideration severity of individual injuries. I raised hell with them and thy backed down.

I hope that this will be the case with Jeff.

I sent an email to the Patriots organization asking if they could help put pressure on BC&BS of MA. They probably won't, but it's worth a "hail mary" if the do respond.

 

[PATSNUTme]

Here is the latest from frankw, Jeffs friend:

Sorry, I was away for the weekend.

Jeff has been approved to stay at Spaulding until March 7th. At that point he will have used up his alloted 60 days of rehab. What happens next remains to be seen.

BCBS initially denied the appeal. Later that day Maureen received a call from a VP at BCBS who "reviewed" the appeal and approved it.

For you Facebook people, Jeff's neice set up a page, initally to bring awareness to Jeff's BBS issue, but I think it morphing into a support page for Jeff:

One-Million-Strong-for-Jeff-Fuller

Let's all hope that Jeff makes big progress between now and 3/7 so he can perhaps go to another facility and continue his way back to full recovery.

 

[Ian]

I just liked his page, and sent it out via our PatsFans.com Facebook page as well. Hopefully that helps them a bit. The insurance thing is just unreal - although nothing surprises me when it comes to that any more

 

[PATSNUTme]

Reported yesterday on Jeff's progress from Frankw:

Sorry I haven't sent an update in a while. Jeff has been making slow and steady progress, he's eating real food now and feeding himself and his therapy has been going pretty well. I was kinda waiting for something big to report. Unfortunately I don't have anything like that to report right now.

At 2:00 AM Friday morning, Maureen called to see if she could drop the kids off because Jeff had spiked a temperature and she was headed to MGH. Jeff's gall bladder was extremely inflamed and he was suffering from pancreatitis. They did a procedure to insert a drain in his gall bladder and they've removed a large amount if nasty fluid from it. He's starting to recover now from that infection. They'll likely remove his gall bladder when everything gets back to normal. And he'll remain at MGH for a little while. Where he goes after that is still to be decided. His time at Spaulding is likely through. Maureen and the family had been leaning towards a Neuro-Rehabilitation Center in Middleboro, but he needs to be medically stable to go to a facility like that. So, we'll have to wait and see.

On the up side, while at MGH they have stopped all of his meds except his anti-seizure meds. While the infection has him run down, he's still alert and talking, even without the neural stimulants they had him on.

More than ever, Jeff could use your positive thoughts and prayers.

 

[Gwedd]

Thanks for the update! These sorts of things are like a sine wave, ups and downs and takes awhile to work through.

He's definitely in my thoughts and I hope things work out well for him and his family.

 

[PATSNUTme]

The latest update on Jeff's condition from frankw

3/25/11
Jeff has been back at Spaulding since last Thursday. The BCBS insurance fight should be over, as he's now being covered by another provider. So, he'll likely be at Spaulding until he's ready to leave or he stops making progress. That's good news.

They're still treating him for his gall bladder infection, but he's winning that battle. This whole thing has probably set him back a few weeks or so. Thankfully he's now back to his daily OT, PT and Speech Therapy sessions and back to making small daily progress.

If you're local and you can make some time, try and get over to see him. These setbacks are obviously frustrating to all of us, but they must be even more frustrating to Jeff. Visiting him is a great way to encourage him an show him how many people care for and are rooting for him.
As always, please keep Jeff and his family in your thoughts and prayers. And if its something you can manage, some new donations wouldn't hurt either. __________________
Donate to Jeff (Babalu) via PayPal

 

[PATSNUTme]

4/5/11 update on Jeff's condition from frankw

I got a call from Maureen today. She was excited to share some good news. Jeff has had a great week. His gall bladder infection is gone and they'll start to think about when the want to remove it soon.


He's back to making small daily progress in speech, occupational and physical therapy. In speech, he's now answering questions in more complete sentences. Instead of answering the question "what are you doing" with "sitting." He's now answering "I'm sitting in this chair." Or when asked what he likes to make at home, "I like to make beer." Another thing he's doing is, rather than just giving an answer that doesn't make sense, he's started to say, "I don't know, or "I don't remember." They are also able to keep him engaged in speech therapy for much longer time periods now. By the way, he's making all this progress without the heavy duty neural stimulant he was on, they've discontinued that one. He is still taking a much milder stimulant, one that he's been on all along.

Today in PT they had him sitting up and they were essentially trying to push him over, trying to test his balance and upper body control. He managed to stay upright. Something he previously wans't so good at. He's also back on the path toward eating real food again.

Something to note here. With each of the infection related setbacks he's had, his progress in therapy has taken a pretty hard hit. Each time it happens he has to work his way back to where he was. So you may be thinking to yourself, gee I thought he was already doing that. Well the answer is yes, he was already doing it. Now the good news is that he is doing it again.

It just goes to show you how much of a fighter Jeff really is.

We're headed in the right direction again! Keep up the positive thoughts and prayers. I still have no doubt that Jeff will be back.


Boy this has been a long, long ordeal for this family. Positive thoughts and prayers may or may not help, but they certainly can't hurt.

 

[PatsDeb]

What a tough row to hoe for these people. I don't know Jeff, but I have been following his story here since you started posting it. Good thoughts and prayers coming this family's way. You don't know how lucky you are to be able to get up and go to that job you don't really like, until you read a story like this.

 

[PATSNUTme]

After almost 10 months of a family ordeal, here is a short but very positive post from Jeff's friend frankw.

from the Million Strong for Jeff page.

Jeff's Dad took him out fishing today and he caught a bass!:rocker:

frank did not put the :rocker: is his post, I did, and here's another:rocker:. Jeff still has a ways to go but but this is very good news indeed. here's another:rocker:

 

[PATSNUTme]

Here is a nice article in one of eh news papers just written about Jeff and his family.

His wife seems to share this spirit.
"I don't know what recovery looks like. I don't know ... if the challenges last for the next 10 years," she said. "But I know we're going to be fine."


Middleboro man battling back from EEE | SouthCoastToday.com