Fundraiser held for Jack Weeks
Life can change in an instant.
For the Weeks family, that realization came June 27, 2020.
Jack Weeks was playing on the beach in front of Lewes Yacht Club. Much like any teenager, he ran into the bay and dove into the water. It was much shallower than expected, and he hit his head, compressed his spine and broke his C4 vertebrae.
Dr. Christian Coletti, an emergency medicine physician at ChristianaCare, just happened to be on the beach with his family when the accident occurred. When Jack was pulled out of the water, he had no pulse, and Coletti and other bystanders with EMS experience helped revive him. He was taken to Beebe Healthcare before being flown to Christiana.
“As difficult as it is to talk about the accident and go through the feelings, we are the luckiest family that I know,” said Kip Weeks, Jack’s dad, at a Nov. 7 fundraiser at Lewes Yacht Club. “My son is alive. My son is with us. He is treating me like any other 17-year-old treats his father.”
Jack, now 17, spent a month at ChristianaCare before being transferred to Shepherd Center in Atlanta, where he spent the next five months. Shepherd is a not-for-profit hospital specializing in medical treatment, research and rehabilitation for people with spinal cord injury, brain injury, stroke, multiple sclerosis, spine and chronic pain, and other neuromuscular conditions.
Jack is considered a C4 quadriplegic. He has control of his deltoids, biceps and triceps.
“He’s gone from not being able to move to being able to move his shoulders, his arms; he can twist his wrists, and he can move his arms up and down,” Kip said.
The Weeks family lives for today with a eye on what can be done tomorrow, Kip said. The goal is to provide the best life for their son Jack and his two younger siblings, he said.
“Anything that was important is insignificant now,” Kip said. “What’s important now is just happiness and enjoying every moment we have together as a family.”
While Jack was in Atlanta with his mother Cammie, Kip sold his wife’s home and his condo, and purchased a new home in Maine that could accommodate the entire family, including Jack’s needs.
“I have gone through this with my partner and my children, and we have bonded as a family more than I ever could’ve dreamt,” Kip said. “When you have something like this happen, you rally and you find the power of your family. We all live together, and we are happy and we are lucky.”
Kip said his family considers themselves stewards for this new challenge – stewards for what they have to work hard to accomplish.
But with that challenge come additional challenges, such as the financial obligations needed to ensure Jack receives the best care possible.
“The Shepherd Center in Atlanta calls this the $2 million accident, because that’s what you spend in the first year,” Kip said. Additionally, he said, the family needs $200,000 per year to cover the basic needs for Jack.
“This puts my family in a strange place,” he said. “We’re not fund-raisers. We haven’t had to be fund-raisers in our life. We went to fundraisers.”
The family did not initially do a GoFundMe because they wanted to keep their story private. Now, they’ve worked with the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation to set up a fundraising page through Help Hope Live.
To donate, go to helphopelive.org/campaign/17554 or mail a check payable to Help Hope Live with “In honor of Jack Weeks” in the memo line to Help Hope Live, 2 Radnor Corporate Center, Suite 100, 100 Matsonford Road, Radnor, PA 19087.
Kip said he’s confident Jack will walk again.
“Thank god it’s not 25 years ago or 40 years ago; it was a life sentence back then,” he said. “The technology is coming, and that’s what’s exciting about this time. We have a rover and drone on Mars. We have the smartest people in the world. Any doctor who is worth their weight is out there and wants to change something.”
