**Update below** Hello friends and community, we started this page to gather support for the Bendon family. Korey Bendon suffered a life altering injury on 3/13/24 and is in critical care in the ICU. Our Schuylerville and Saratoga community is small but strong and the Bendon family has donated their time to various school, sports, and their church to foster our youth and serve as wonderful members of this community. They now need our help. Today, with support of everyone, my hope is we can work together to help with their medical bills through the GoFundMe organized by Sarah and Geoff Raeder (link below) and once the family are at home, with other necessities that they will need help with such as a meal train (TBD). This will also be the central location for updates shared by the family that you can sign up for. It is a long road ahead and everything we can do to help will make a difference for them more than words can say! Please share far and wide. Our prayers are with Korey, Trish, and the boys. Thank you! ***Update**** 4/13/24 Korey is doing really well now that he is at a rehab center focused on getting physically ready to go home at some point in the near future. He has limited mobility in his left arm and leg, but he is actually gaining some movement and can squeeze his hand and somewhat move and flex his leg, which is a miracle since the doctors originally said there was no hope for his left side paralysis to improve! His speech, memory, and cognition is just about normal (still recovering and healing however) and he is in good spirits and hopeful to continue recovering and get home. As many of of you may know, what happened to Korey is very complicated to explain. Part of the point of this update (requested by Trish) is to share a bit more about what happened so that it may save her having to explain to so many people. Over the last year, Korey has been on various medications for a few different aches and pains. In some cases, the medications were classified as anti-depressants, but are commonly also used for joint pain. These types of drugs are very dangerous if you stop taking them suddenly, which may have been the case with Korey. On top of that, he was prescribed prednisone for a sinus infection and that is when a switch flipped in his mental stability. The doctors believe now that he had an adverse reaction to the prednisone, which has a documented risk in some people of causing a steroid-induced psychosis and psychotic syndromes. Possibly due to the anti-depressants that he was prescribed for joint pain, plus the adverse reaction to prednisone, a perfect storm led to sever insomnia and a serious change in his mental state. He had not had any form of clinical depression before this, and beside Korey showing signs of not feeling well, being tired, and a bit despondent, there were no serious red flags, to this degree, seen by any of his friends or family, even the week/day of his accident. After this 2-month period of severe insomnia and complications leading to a psychotic break, something went seriously wrong and he attempted to hurt himself. He does not exactly remember the details and said he had no premeditated thoughts of hurting himself or feelings of depression. He told the doctors within a day or two afterward, that he simply couldn’t take the insomnia anymore and it was like an impulse that he can’t explain. He is very lucky to be alive, let alone, making such a great recovery. For anyone who knows Korey, this is just as unexplainable and hard to understand as it is for him to explain. Now that he is being cared for, medications monitored and he has had a chance to rest and recover, he is obviously facing how to move forward, which will be a long road. However, it is no doubt a miracle that he survived and will be able to be present for his family moving forward. *****As you can imagine, the Bendon family is going to continue to need our help. Please keep boosting the GoFundMe and consider helping out with the Meal Train which Trish has said has been a godsend! They will need a considerable amount of monetary support in order to afford at-home support and care and to make their home accessible for Korey. Please continue to give whatever you can, every dollar will count!