The ceiling is gone in one upstairs bedroom there, but you can still stand inside it today. On Saturday, volunteers helping the family pick up the pieces discovered a cross remained on the wall.
On Friday, a quadriplegic man with multiple sclerosis was in his bed in that room. Without time to move, his wife and a son decided to use their bodies to protect him, volunteer Renee Stewart said.
The man, Frank, was struck in the head, Stewart said. Part of the ceiling collapsed onto them. He’s hospitalized but expected to be OK. The wife and son were unharmed.
Stewart knows Frank because she cares for him through Nebraska Medicine’s Multiple Sclerosis at Home Access program, or MAHA. He was the first patient in the program, she said.
She said around 15 people associated with the program are helping with the cleanup and salvaging what they can, allowing family to focus on Frank at the hospital.
“They welcome you into their home,” she said. “They become more like family. It’s like it wasn’t even a question, right? Like, when your family … needs you, where do you go? You go to help them. And so that’s why we’re here.”
As they were watching the storm coverage, Stewart and others in the program worried about their patients in the tornado’s path, because they are unable to move to safety easily.
“We just had this gut-wrenching feeling, this fear that something like this exactly was doing to happen,” she said.
A friend of the family is looking to raise funds for upcoming expenses, including a wheelchair van. The link to the online fundraiser is here.
