Liz Siefert loves riding horses. Always has. Always will. For her nothing offers the freedom and inspires the confidence like working in tandem with a well-groomed thousand pound animal as it goes through its graceful paces. It’s been that way ever since Liz was eight years-old and her father took her on a vacation trip to Florida. The hotel they were staying at happened to have a small equestrian center where kids could go on pony rides and, well, fair to say that from the moment Liz first climbed in the saddle she was hooked. By the age of ten she was competing – and winning awards – in riding and jumping competitions across the country. It was clear from the beginning that Liz had a gift when it came to working with horses.
Now, twenty years after that first pony ride, this remarkable young woman is still riding high. Higher than ever, in fact, when one considers the real-life obstacles she has had to overcome.
The first devastating blow came in 2001 when Liz was 16 years-old. That’s when she fell ill and shortly thereafter was diagnosed as having leukemia. At an age when most girls’ thoughts are focused on boys and fashions, Liz was looking cancer right in the face. What followed was a prolonged and grueling protocol of radiation and chemotherapy treatments at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee. As the treatment intensified, however, so did the aggressiveness of the disease. The frequency and dosage of treatments had to be accelerated, so much so that it unavoidably compromised the internal chemistry throughout her body, including her bone marrow cells. Eventually doctors came to the conclusion that more drastic measures had to be taken.
Three and a half years after the initial diagnosis, Liz underwent a bone marrow transplant as a final step in what would ultimately be her hard-won victory over cancer. Recovery from all this was slow in coming, but when it finally did Liz was more than ready to move on with her life.
Now jump forward to August of 2004. Liz was about to begin her sophomore year at Marquette University where she was studying another passion of hers – photography. But on this particular day Liz and her family were in Madison helping her older sister move into an apartment for her upcoming school year. It was a sunny, flip-flops sort of day on campus and the energy of incoming students was everywhere. At one point Liz went off on to do some shopping on her own for a while. Meeting up afterward, the family staked out a place to eat at an outdoor café on State Street. Just that morning Liz had undergone a scheduled colonoscopy back at Children’s Hospital as part of the follow-up to her bone marrow transplant. Sitting around the café table everything seemed full of promise again for the Sieferts.
Then Liz suddenly grew silent. Something wasn’t right. Seconds later she fell to the ground and lost consciousness. By all appearances she was having some short of seizure. Panicked 911 calls ensued and quickly brought paramedics to the scene. Once there, the Emergency Technicians could tell right away that her heart had stopped, thus cutting off vital oxygen to the brain. (Later speculation had it that the flushing out process involved with the colonoscopy had drastically lowered her level of electrolytes or neurons that keep her heart muscles working.)
It wasn’t until Liz was at the emergency room that her heart was brought back to full resuscitation, but unfortunately by then the brain damage was irreversible. Liz had suffered an anoxic brain injury. A few days later she was stable enough to be transferred back to Children’s Hospital where she would stay for the next two months, finally being released on October 27th – her birthday.
While Liz’s memories of this whole time remain sketchy at best, her mother, Linda, remembers it all too well.
“Even with all we had been though to that point, nothing could have prepared us for what happened that day in Madison,” Linda Siefert said. “It was so sudden, so terrifying. And then there’s that feeling of utter helplessness. Especially as a mother that’s really the tough one.”
What followed for Liz was yet another seemingly endless cycle of treatments, prescriptions and therapy sessions. And as if that wasn’t enough, during this time she had to have both hip joints replaced due to bone deterioration precipitated by the marrow transplant.
However, even with the best of efforts from dedicated doctors and rehab specialists, there was still something missing in Liz’s recovery. Enter the Friendship Network of the Brain Injury Resource Center. Liz’s sister was looking for help in getting Liz re-acclimated to the norms of daily life when she learned of the BIRC.
Liz admits she was nervous when she attended her first session of the Friendship Network on a weeknight in September of 2012, but any doubts or self-conscious thoughts quickly melted away when she opened the door and stepped inside.
“It was so great just to see and meet people who really knew what I had gone through,” Liz said. “I needed to know I wasn’t alone in this, and meeting and talking with others really helped a lot.”
Liz’s mother added that just bringing survivors of a similar age together to share their stories amongst themselves serves an essential role in recovery.
“Once they’re out of the hospital and the therapy sessions are over survivors still need something more to keep themselves moving forward,” Linda Siefert said. “They need that common bond with others. That’s what we were looking for, and that’s exactly what we found with the Brain Injury Resource Center.”
Today Liz is a deservedly proud cancer and brain injury survivor. She’s also a student at UWM where she has resumed her study of photography. And perhaps best of all, she’s riding horses again. Whereas riding her horse, named Dylan, had been a vital part of her recovery from leukemia, for a while after the brain injury she was physically unable to ride. But now she can share with others of the Friendship Network how she is back in the saddle and doing what she loves most of all.
That’s when her bright smile tells the story best of all.
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