A Family’s Costly Love : A Couple Struggle to Cope With Drained Finances, Emotions as They Care for Daughter Left Brain-Damaged by a Drunk Driver

Steve Tomlinson came home from his normal 12-hour workday Thursday night, walked into his daughter’s room, leaned down and softly kissed her forehead.

“Look at Daddy, Cindy. Come on,” he whispered in her ear. “Daddy’s here,” he said.

Cindy, 24, is in a coma. The pretty, blue-eyed brunette was injured in a car accident--hit by a drunk driver--nearly a year ago. She suffered brain damage after her head smashed through the windshield. Doctors then gave her only a 5% chance of survival.

Once again, her father prodded her to look at him. She cracked her eyes open for a split second. “She’s pooped,” he said, giving her another kiss.

Tomlinson, 43, gazed at his daughter, attired in a yellow nightgown that says It’s A Long Story, laying still in her bedroom in their Huntington Beach home.

“And with the bills. . . . I only make so much,” said Tomlinson, a plumber, who commutes daily to the Los Angeles area for work. “But it’s our daughter. . . . You do what you have to do.”

His heartbreak and financial hardship are shared by many families who choose to care for helpless loved ones in the home rather than keeping them institutionalized.

Cindy is perpetually linked to machines that sustain her life. From one machine stretches a feeding tube; a tube from another machine sucks mucus from her tracheotomy to prevent respiratory infections; and a third machine supplies mist to her lungs to prevent respiratory problems.

A rosary with pink beads hangs from one machine, and a statue of a guardian angel perches on a shelf behind Cindy’s bed. A banner that reads “We love you, Cindy” is fixed to the wall, also adorned with a teddy bear and two stuffed rabbits, put there by her father.

Tomlinson and his wife, Donna, 41, brought their daughter home Dec. 11. from the rehabilitation center. Since then, a wrenching family tragedy has also become an endless financial struggle--a nightmare, says Steve Tomlinson.

After the Feb. 19 accident, Cindy spent two months in Long Beach Memorial Medical Center, followed by eight months in a Torrance rehabilitation center. She was a passenger in a friend’s red Toyota that was hit head-on by the drunk driver. The drunk was driving the wrong way on Lakewood Boulevard near Long Beach Airport, allegedly fleeing police.

Cindy suffered head injuries, a lacerated liver, a shattered right wrist, fractures to her pelvis, right foot and nose, and multiple deep wounds on her face.

Cindy and her friend were on their way home from a night of dancing at a club in Lakewood. “Cindy loved to dance,” her mother said.

Cindy’s friend broke her arm and a leg and has since recovered from her injuries. The drunk driver, who was sentenced to three years and eight months in jail, was uninsured.

Cindy, who taught preschool and attended Orange Coast College at the time of the accident, had no private health insurance. She wanted to devote her life to working with abused children.

Donna said the family believed Cindy wasn’t getting the care she needed at the rehabilitation center. She drove an hour each way and spent 10 hours every day with her daughter to make sure she was taken care of.

Last August, the Tomlinsons were told they could take their daughter home from the rehabilitation center. What they didn’t know was that Medi-Cal wouldn’t pay for the same care at home.

Medi-Cal pays only $600 a month toward her home nursing care, contrasted with between $12,000 and $15,000 a month for her care at the rehabilitation center, the family said. Medi-Cal does pay for some of her supplies and medications as well as the medical equipment and her bed.

The first month Cindy was home, the Tomlinsons had an overnight nurse seven days a week. But that cost $5,900, Donna said, paid for by donations from fund-raising efforts last year.

Now the Tomlinsons can only afford a nurse one night a week, on Wednesdays, to care for her. And the Tomlinsons look forward to it so they can get a full night’s sleep.

“That’s all we can afford right now,” Donna said. “But I’ll stay up, I’ll care for her. I’ll never send her back to rehab. It’s a lot of work, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The Tomlinsons give their daughter round-the-clock nursing care, which means sleepless nights to turn her every two hours so she doesn’t get bed sores. They also give her timely doses of medication, change her diapers, or feed her liquid foods through a tube inserted into her stomach.

Days are spent giving her physical therapy, reading to her, bathing her, talking to her, playing her favorite music on the cassette player or watching Oprah Winfrey, her favorite television talk show. When they can afford it, a nurse’s aide is hired to help Donna during the day.

“You never find me outside of this room,” said Donna, who’s lost 60 pounds since the accident and admitted she still cries almost every day.

Donna brushes her daughter’s teeth three times a day and shaves her legs every day. Sometimes, she’ll even curl her hair and put make-up on her. “It makes her feel much better,” Donna said.

Since Cindy’s been home, she’s shown progress, the family said. She’s become responsive to touch, such as an ice cube, she moves her arms and she has cried.

Because the family wanted to bring her home, they launched a fund-raising drive last summer to help pay her medical bills. By year’s end, $9,200 had been raised, said Aaron Gold of Placentia, Cindy’s grandfather. Now, most of that has been spent on her care, with only a few hundred dollars remaining.

Gold said cooperative business owners have allowed him to place about 50 donation boxes in establishments countywide, and friends have held bake sales and swap meets to supplement the $1,200 a month the boxes bring. Two Huntington Beach fund-raisers are also planned at Sizzler restaurants; one on Feb. 17 at 18552 Beach Blvd., and a second March 16 at 16122 Golden West St.

But with Cindy’s home-care costs mounting, the family has filed a claim with the city of Long Beach in anticipation of filing a lawsuit seeking money for her care.

The Tomlinsons said that while it’s been tough to deal with the tragedy, the support of family and friends gets them through each day.

“I’m just so thankful for them,” said Donna, adding that she and her husband couldn’t go it alone.

Cindy’s 23-year-old brother, David, her grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends drop by often, and it’s been similarly tough on them too.

“It’s frustrating because we were friends for so long,” said Marlene Leatherman, 25, of Westminster. “I want to pick up the phone and call her. But you can’t because she’s in a coma,” she said, starting to cry.

“You come to visit her and it seems unreal . . . because she doesn’t respond.”

Friend Terri Johnson, 24, of Huntington Beach said she also thinks about Cindy every day.

“It’s really hard,” Johnson said. “I miss her.”

Cindy’s aunt, Karen Kulungian, 42, of Fountain Valley, often visits to help her sister, Donna. Kulungian has also become a volunteer for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She speaks to first-time drunk driving offenders and shows them pictures of Cindy--before and after the accident.

“If I can help one person realize what drinking and driving can do to a family and how it changes their whole life, then it’s worth speaking--no matter how painful it can be sharing her story,” Kulungian said, breaking into tears as she rubbed Cindy’s hand, her long fingernails painted red.

Donna said doctors told them their daughter would never wake up from the coma. But they have vowed to prove them wrong.

“I don’t listen to (the doctors) because they’re not God,” she said. “As long as you believe in God and miracles, I believe in my heart she’ll be OK.”