Greetings, We all know Cindy as a good friend and relative, loving wife to Rod Guthrie, loyal contributor to her community as faithful Temple Baptist Church member and long-time employee at Bancorp South.
I'm Ron Burr, husband of Sherry Hartman-Burr, Cindy's sister and only living immediate (biological) family member. I'm trying to help out as many of you will want to do. Right now, Rod and Sherry are busily engaged in Cindy's rehabilitation.
On June 3, Cindy, Sherry, Rod, her good friend Karen McPhail and I were visiting Karen's daughter and son-in-law, Jennifer and Phillip Clay in Chattanooga. Leaving from lunch Cindy's foot slid on an uneven sidewalk causing her to fall straight back with nothing to break the fall. Her head hit the pavement of the road resulting in a traumatic brain injury.
When that tragedy occurred, one positive note was her being by one of the best hospitals in the region to treat her, Erlinger of Chattanooga, which has a well-known neurosurgical center. During a couple of weeks there, the family became aware of the Southeast Region's premier rehabilitation hospital, the Shepherd Center of Atlanta. They specialize in treating only injuries such as Cindy's traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury and have been designated as one of the top 10 such rehabilitation locations in the US. It was such a blessing that Cindy was accepted and has been there as an inpatient since June 19th.
Our entries into Cindy's Caring Bridge site, created for Cindy's relatives, friends and friends of relative and friends to become informed and stay informed about her condition and recovery.
In addition to that information purpose, there are the following. I think we all want this site to make things easier for Rod when he and Cindy return home. We don't know quite when that is yet, maybe in a couple of weeks, but we will inform people of that date as it comes around.
We want the local folks to have a ready way of finding out how you can assist Rod, if you want to. That would be: taking a turn sitting with Cindy so Rod can take care of necessities, preparing a recipe once in a while for freezing to make it easier for Rod to have healthy meals available for Cindy, shopping or running an errand, or perhaps assist with a transport to town for her medical and rehab needs . . . as well as other things that will come up.
Caring Bridge provides resources on their site to keep up on these needs, like a calendar on which is posted particular needs for some particular dates.
Caring Bridge provides an avenue for contributing funds to her cause of receiving various sorts of care. We are not fond of that avenue, Go Fund Me, because it seems a bit obtrusive. If there is a desire to help, but time or distance or a busy life prevent that, we can provide another, less obtrusive, link on Caring Bridge so there is another avenue to volunteer help for Cindy.
Please forward Cindy's Caring Bridge site to anyone you think would like to keep abreast of Cindy's progress and hard work as she makes her journey of healing and rehabilitation. Or, simply link it to your social media contacts. We may have no idea who would like to know of Cindy's accident and condition.
