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Constable: Cafe serves up help after waitress' son has near-fatal brain hemorrhage

A popular waitress at Jelly Cafe in Mount Prospect, Rosie Rodriguez was handling the Friday lunch rush on Sept. 9 when she got a phone call that merely hinted at the life-altering disaster coming. Her 11-year-old son, Dary, had a headache and was in the nurse's office at Stuart R. Paddock School in Palatine, where he is a sixth-grader.

They had no idea this could surpass other challenges they've faced.

“When he was a baby, we'd sleep in the Wal-Mart (parking lot) because my son and me, we were homeless in Texas,” says the 38-year-old. She moved there by herself 13 years ago from her hometown in Mexico, and Dary was born two years later. With no contact or support from the father, Rodriguez and Dary moved to Palatine when the boy was 2 and forged a happy life.

Thumbing through photos on her phone to show her son dancing and having fun in selfies he sends daily to his aunts in Mexico, Rodriguez stumbles across pictures of a smiling Dary sitting next to backpacks and coolers on a cold park bench last winter in Chicago.

“We made sandwiches and Mexican hot chocolate for homeless people. We take the train and every homeless person we see, we give it to them,” Rodriguez says.

The kindness they sow is coming back tenfold, mostly through a youcaring.com fundraising website set up by Kaitlin Kretsch, who owns the Jelly Cafe with her husband, Billy.

“I can't believe it that people love me,” Rodriguez says, wiping tears from her eyes. “I really appreciate it.”

Even before anyone knew Dary's headache was the result of a near-fatal

hemorrhage in his brain, Billy Kretsch was trying to help. While Rodriguez was waiting tables, he drove to the boy's school and told the nurse he was delivering chewable pain relievers.

“By the time I was done with that conversation the nurse said, 'I think we should call an ambulance,'” Billy Kretsch says. The school called Rodriguez again.

“They told me he's bad, bad, bad. He's crying,” Rodriguez says. After Dary arrived at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, doctors quickly decided to transfer the boy to Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.

“He didn't know who I was,” Rodriguez says, explaining how her son stared off into space. “I cried bad. I didn't want to think, just cry.”

As a fellow waitress drove a frantic Rodriguez, a helicopter rushed the now-unconscious boy to Lurie Children's Hospital, where Dr. Craig M. Smith, medical director of the pediatric intensive care unit, says he “rallied the troops” in the neurocritical care team to deal with “an evolving brain catastrophe.”

“Time is brain,” Smith says, meaning the more time that passes, the more a brain can be damaged.

Pressure was building in Dary's brain because of bleeding caused by an arteriovenous malformation, a tangle of abnormal blood vessels connecting arteries and veins in the brain. The defect can go undetected for a lifetime, or it can start bleeding and cause problems at any age. If Dary had taken an ambulance fighting with traffic instead of the helicopter to Lurie, the outcome would have been different.

“Ultimately, death. There's no other way around this,” Smith says. “He was under such pressure and so sick when he came in.”

A team of Lurie specialists headed by neurosurgeons Tadanori Tomita and Robin Bowman and neuro-interventional radiologist Ali Shaibani stabilized Dary, drilled a hole in the boy's head that night and inserted a drain to relieve the pressure. Forty-eight hours later, they inserted a second drain for the other side of his brain. They kept Dary in a coma and took “meticulous control” of his temperature, electrolytes, glucose levels and anything else that could have taxed the boy's brain, Smith says.

His mom slept by his side that first night and since then has been given a room in the nearby Ronald McDonald House. A week after the bleeding started, Dary was stable enough to undergo surgery to clip out the clump of problem blood-vessel tissue. Now, everyone is waiting to see how quickly and how well he recovers.

“They told me two weeks, two months, a year. They don't know,” says his

  A waitress who goes out of her way to make others feel good, Rosie Rodriguez of Palatine says she is grateful for the outpouring of help after her son, Dary, 11, suffered life-threatening bleeding in his brain. Gilbert R. Boucher II/gboucher@dailyherald.com

mom, who adds that she doesn't know what is covered under her Illinois All Kids insurance. “I pray so much and I say to my family, 'Pray for my kid.' I tell my Lord, 'Don't take my son.' He has to stay calmed down, so that's why I stopped crying.”

There are no guarantees, but Smith says he hopes doctors can get the boy starting rehabilitation soon and maybe even back in school before the year ends in the spring.

“We find that kids can make remarkable recoveries,” Smith says, telling stories of kids who go home in wheelchairs unable to speak, only to walk in for appointments six months later as if nothing had happened. “That's one of the most satisfying things I can be part of.”

In the meantime, Smith is impressed by the outpouring of support for Dary and his mother that has grown because of the Jelly Cafe owners, staff and customers.

“It's pretty inspiring when people stand up for each other like that,” Smith says.

“I appreciate it so much,” Rodriguez says. The waitress who drove her to the hospital stayed by her side for hours that first night. Another waitress drove to her apartment the next day and did the dishes. A neighbor took in two of Dary's three guinea pigs, and the Kretsches, parents of daughters Paige, 2½, and Hayden, 1, are looking after Tyson, the biggest guinea pig.

Jelly Cafe is collecting donations for Dary and his mom at the restaurant and through the youcaring.com site, which is touted on posters and the cafe's menu. “One side has our specials, and the other side tells what's going on with Rosie,” says Kaitlin Kretsch, who canceled Rodriguez's cable TV and Dary's after-school program and is looking for others ways to save money until the waitress can return to work. She says Rodriguez goes out of her way to help others.

“I like to share whatever I have. My son is the same,” Rodriguez says. “Sometimes, I have homeless people sleep in my house. He brings the pillows and blankets and asks, 'Are you OK? Do you need anything?'”

She's a hit with diners.

“I get more requests to sit in her section than I do for any other waitress. I've had people wait 45 minutes to sit in her section,” Billy Kretsch says of Rodriguez. “She collects our recyclables to donate to her church. She collects clothing to donate to her church.”

Rodriguez is especially good with children and older people.

“Rosie's always kissing kids on the head or trying to teach them Spanish,” Kaitlin Kretsch says.

“I love it. It's my pleasure,” Rodriguez says, explaining that she is driven to make

Shown during a winter outing to hand out sandwiches to the homeless in Chicago, Rosie Rodriguez and her son, Dary, 11, now are receiving help from others. Courtesy of Rosie Rodriguez

people</appy. “We don't know what happened in their homes, what happened in their lives.”

Now those customers know about the tough times she and Dary are facing.

“Rosie, you may not have local family, but know that you have a tight-knit community who loves you and will be thinking of and praying for you and Dary,” reads one youcaring post.

“He's a great kid,” says Rachel Bland, Dary's school principal, who is spreading the word. “As a community, we're going to do this.”

The donations should keep Rodriguez afloat until she can return to work, Kaitlin Kretsch says.

“Her job would never be in jeopardy. She's got all the time she needs, however long it takes,” Billy Kretsch says.

Rehab could be lengthy and difficult. But everyone has hope. Dary sat up Thursday, and even asked his mom to go back to work.

“I want this kid to go back to being who he was,” says Smith of Lurie Children's Hospital.

“I want him to be a good boy,” Dary's mom says, “and he is.”

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