Hello, my name is Kasie Burtard. I currently work for the Division of Wildlife as the Assistant Office Manager. My love of the outdoors has brought me to this position. I was born and raised in Carbondale Colorado. I grew up riding horses with my family, my parents were employed by the Cattleman’s Association in Carbondale, this job involved moving 1300 head of cattle from range to range. My brother and I helped my mom and dad every summer until I was 15; we lived in a cabin and moved cows from sunup to sundown. Riding horses was my life, and still is although it is more difficult.

I graduated from Roaring Fork High Schoolin year 2000. I was active in sports, and participating in Rodeos for the high school rodeo team, and during the summers.

 One year after I graduated I was in a serious car accident that left me paralyzed. On January 04, 2002 my whole life changed. I was driving to work one morning, when I hit some ice and rolled the truck that I was driving. I was not wearing my seatbelt, and was ejected out of the back passenger window. I was left with a spinal cord injury, fracturing my T8, 9, and 10 vertebrates, along with my jaw, all of my ribs on my right side, and some of the bones surrounding my right eye. I was flown to St. Mary’s Hospital where I spent 11 days then flown to Denver to Craig Hospital where I then spent another three months learning to live in a wheel chair. Since then I have experimented with many different ways of therapy, including acupuncture, the hyperbaric chamber, and other physical therapy. I have traveled many places (New Mexico, St. Louis, Texas, and Oklahoma) for therapy, in hopes to a full recovery, in my mind that means walking again.

Having just graduated and knowing several of the kids in high school, I used my experience to educate others. I spent some time speaking at the school regarding safe driving. It is very important to me that young kids don’t make the same mistake that I did, and realize that accidents happen so quickly and can be devastating.

After my accident, I moved back in with my parents for two years. I then attended Mesa State College to pursue an Elementary Education degree. I then decided to continue with more therapy, so I traveled to Texas. While I was in Texas I met some great and inspirational people, who encouraged me to continue with therapy in Tulsa Oklahoma. In Tulsa I learned how to ride an exercise bike without stimulation, and the week before Christmas I took 132 steps with a walker. This was a major accomplishment for me. I am excited to travel to India for Stem Cell treatment, because I think it will help to improve my therapy, and hopefully help me to gain muscle mass, balance, and hopefully to someday walk again!  My future plans are to continue to work for the Division of Wildlife, I have found a job that I love and will love forever. Everyone I work with is very supportive of all the therapy I do, and will continue to support me until I reach my goals.

I have started and account at the Alpine Bank under the name of The India Fund for Kasie! You may also send checks made out to me to my home address (PO Box 1305 Carbondale Colo. 81623). You may also donate frequent flyer miles for my international flights in lieu of purchasing an airfare.  (Someone can donate miles by calling an airline directly and putting the ticket in my name. For example, United Airlines economy ticket to India is 80,000 miles or business class is 120,000 miles.) 

Hopefull, that all goes well in the planning and I can get all of my funding together I plan to go to India for the treatments as soon as I can. I am shooting for mid February, of the beginning of March.

Kasie M. Burtard

Tags: Acupuncture, aspen, bike, chris, city, class, club, colorado, day, exercise, india, injury, love, outdoor, outdoors, physical, planning, position, spa, sports, therapy, week, work

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under Aspen Colorado. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.