Taken aback by the community’s outpouring of support, Brittany Sheahan said it has been unlike anything she has ever seen.
Sheahan is the common-law partner of Cameon Stone, 26, who was critically injured in a workplace incident at the Flour Mill silos on June 6.
Two online fundraisers have raised more than $27,000 for his family, which includes the couple’s eight-week-old girl, Serenity, and is in addition to a scattering of cash donations, diapers, formula and even dog food and treats for the couple’s canine companion.
“The support is unbelievable and I don’t know how to express how grateful I am,” Sheahan told Sudbury.com. “I’ve never seen the community reach out so much, and support so much and wanting to know all the updates and everything.”
The family has been posting updates every other day on the leading GoFundMe page, which has been organized by Stone’s cousin, Alora Violet-Marie Kerr. A second GoFundMe page organized by friend Breanne Ross has also been set up.
As reported earlier this week, Stone has been taken out of his induced coma and, despite severe pain being treated by fentanyl, has been progressing along a long road to recovery.
“Today … they took him off the sedation, they’ve minimized the drugs that he’s on and they put him in a recliner chair just to get him a little more mobile,” Sheahan said on Tuesday.
Stone has also started to receive some physiotherapy, “just so he can start moving a little bit more so he doesn’t get any blood clots of any kind, because he’s healing at an extraordinary rate.”
Although Stone is unable to communicate fully with his family due to a tube placed down his throat to help him breathe, he has been responding with a thumb’s up during video calls.
While his parents have been able to visit him in the intensive care unit in-person, Sheahan has been limited to video calls thus far because she’s not fully vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus. She plans on receiving her second dose later this month and visiting Stone as soon as possible afterward.
“It’s very difficult for me not physically being there by his side,” she said, adding that video calls have at least allowed them some form of connection, which he appears to appreciate, particularly on calls that involve Serenity, their daughter.
A proud “labourer,” Stone had been working with CK Construction Inc. – a company he has been with for a few years – working on the Flour Mill silos in preparation for an 111th anniversary celebration when the June 6 incident took place.
“He loves the hands-on work and being in the outdoors and the consistency of it,” Sheahan said.
The cherry picker Stone was working in approximately 60 feet in the air was on unstable ground that gave way under one of its supporting wheels, Sheahan said, which sent him plummeting to the ground alongside the machine he was harnessed to.
The care he has received at Health Sciences North since that time has been excellent, Sheahan said.
“His mom and dad are the only ones who are coming and going with him in the ICU, and they say that the support there, the nurses and doctors, go above and beyond and are always checking on him and there’s always a nurse by his side,” she said, adding that they’ve exhibited a great deal of compassion for everyone involved.
In recognition of the public’s ongoing interest in Stone’s story, Sheahan said his family would continue to post updates on his medical journey to the main GoFundMe page.
“They are always good updates,” Sheahan said, optimistic in looking at her partner’s progression. “There’s always good news of some kind.”
Next up will be hip and pelvis surgeries later this week, she said.
“From then it’s physio and just the little things,” she added. “One day at a time, and it’s all based on how he continues to recover.”
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.
