No. 19 Vol. 8
www.mypaperonline.com
August 2021
Local Woman Defeats Stroke, Coma, and Brain Surgeries to Enjoy Life Gratefully
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By Steve Sears or Kristen Toepfer of Hackettstown, the next to last day of being age 36 was a dream lived. She walked the runway for Supermodels Unlimited Magazine during New York Fashion Week. She was feeling on top of the world. The next two days, the latter being her 37th birthday, she wound up fighting for her life. Toepfer and her husband, Sidney Church – Lenape Valley High School sweethearts and now married, together for a collective 21 years - will always remember September 11, 2018. That day, Toepfer suffered a stroke, and then had emergency brain surgery and went into a coma on the following day, when she turned 37. After coming out of the coma, she began a long, arduous battle to stay alive by doing physical therapy and enduring multiple brain surgeries. Toepfer at about 3 a.m. called her husband at his UPS night job. “She sounded a little confused and she said her arm wasn’t working and stuff,” Church recalls. Only 10 minutes away, he rushed home and both went to Hack-
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Kristen Toepfer walks the runway at New York Fashion Week in 2019. Photo courtesy of Sidney Church
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ettstown Medical Center. When a CT scan was done, the medical staff discovered both a stroke and bleeding in her brain. Diagnosed as a Hemorrhagic stroke, Toepfer was sent to Summit’s Overlook Hospital, where she was medicated and tests were done. With her skull swelling to a certain size, doctors performed a Craniectomy to remove a portion of her skull to allow the swelling to continue. “She was in a coma – breathing tube, everything,” says Church. “She couldn’t breathe on her own.” And then doctors delivered some potential grim news. “The doctors certainly didn’t sugarcoat anything for me. I’m asking questions like, ‘What kind of damage?’ and ‘When is she going to be able to talk?’ And they said, ‘You need to slow down right now and set your expectations that she might not even wake up from this.” Toepfer came out of the coma, very slowly however, her eyes occasionally opening and left arm slightly twitching. During her three weeks at Overlook, although her speech was almost nonexistent and she had zero movement in her right arm and very little in her right leg, she did inpatient rehab. After the inpatient therapy ended, in November she was able to walk out of Overlook. However, when just home for one day, she had a seizure in the middle of the night, and after being transported to Hackettstown Medical Center again for tests and CT scans, she was sent back to Overlook again to be operated on because there was an infection on the brain. “They had to redo the incision, which I’m guessing it’s probably at least 12 or 13 inches because it goes from their forehead all the way to the back of the ear,” says Church, “and they opened her back up so they could do what is called a brainwash, and then she had IV antibiotics while she was in the hospital for another week or two after that.” Prior to returning back home and working with a home nurse, she had to go back to rehab for a month. “After everything they did, she kind of got set back a little bit – almost starting from scratch.” In July of 2019, doctors were able to put a plate in place of a bone which had been removed from her head, but in late August, her incisions started leaking. The next morning again at Hackettstown, the plate was removed, a brainwash was again done, and she returned home again, continued on page 6