Staggering medical bills threaten student’s dream of attending the University of Miami.
This past summer was on its way to being one of the best years of Jazzmin Peluchette’s life.
At 17, she was just two credits shy of fulfilling her graduation requirements and hadn’t even started her senior year yet.
She was already studying for her associate’s degree at Florida International University. She was volunteering, running every day, working as a lifeguard — and, with high grades and a SAT score of 2060 — had one singular dream: enrolling in the University of Miami.
The moment that changed Jazzmin’s life began with a sharp pain in her back, as she was driving to FIU on July 11.
Within 24 hours, she would find herself hooked up to life support, blind and paralyzed. When she woke up at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital in Hollywood the next day, she was so frightened that it took a team of doctors and nurses to calm her down.
And it would take eight more days before they would even know what was wrong.
“At one point, I thought I was going to die,’’ Jazzmin said. “I was just so frightened.’’
She spent the next five weeks in intensive care, diagnosed with a rare disease, called NeuroMyelitis Optica (NMO), an autoimmune disorder that attacks the nervous system and is especially aggressive on young people. It’s not clear how many people have the disease because it is often misdiagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis. And there is no known cure. Patients sometimes relapse.
Over the next few months, Jazzmin — once an active, determined and independent teenager — struggled daily with the physical and emotional pain of realizing her life probably was never going to be the same.
Simple things, like being able to hold a spoon, seemed out of reach.