A little about me...

A little about me... my name is Eileen Schroder. I live in John's Creek, Georgia, USA. I'm 47-years-old with an amazing 17-year-old daughter, Kate.

Eileen & Kate

Seven years ago, I was coming home from the gym and felt a bump on my leg. No big deal, I thought. I must have pulled a muscle. Within hours the bump became excruciatingly painful. A trip to the emergency room told me it was a strained muscle. After a sleepless night and early the next morning, I went back to the emergency room barely able to walk. A morphine drip did nothing to ease the pain or the screams created by it. The doctors were perplexed. They didn't know what was happening to me. Suddenly, my blood pressure became extremely low and my family insisted I be transferred to another hospital, Emory University Hospital. I must say, even in the midst of horrible pain, the life flight on the helicopter was pretty cool. Heavily medicated and in a lot of pain, I was still able to 'experience' the flight.

When I reached Emory University Hospital, they knew immediately what it was, necrotizing fasciitis, or the flesh eating disease. It attacks the fascia surrounding the muscles which made my entire right leg horribly discolored. They took me into surgery immediately to amputate my leg. By this time, I was in multiple organ failure and my family was given a 95% mortality rate. A family doctor explained that they were going to cut me open, move aside my stomach and there would be one of two outcomes. Either all of my organs would be dead and they would sew me up, or they would be alive and the doctors would get to work. Thankfully, the latter of the two happened. 

Following came 12 weeks of a medically induced coma during which time the only answers given to my family was they didn't know if I was to live or die.

When I woke up, and for the next 3 months life was horrible. I was on a respirator which wasn't set correctly and caused me to cough all day. I had fluid in my lungs that repeatedly had to be suctioned out. The dressing changes to my stomach and hip were excruciating. My body was paralyzed. After a long battle to get off life support, I made it to rehab where I learned to roll over and push myself up in bed. I had speech therapy, occupational therapy and physical therapy. The latter of which was performed by a physical terrorist I lovingly called 'The Nazi'.

So, that's how I got to where I am. 

I've always had a love for traveling, but now, and for the last 7 years I have looked at travel through an entirely different lens than before. Coming from a hospitality background, I could immediately 'see' what restaurants, hotels, establishments and companies were doing right and what they were doing wrong to make things accessible to me in my wheelchair. (I do have a prosthetic, which I love to wear, but when I travel I only use my wheelchair. I also use crutches for the inaccessible places, just because I'm too headstrong and stubborn to accept accessibility limitations.)