Jenny Ebelhar recognizes it all — every card, every call, every text and every donation over the past year. In fact, she calls her story a “testimony being built to honor God.”
Jenny and her husband Scott have six children, ages 11 to 22. Throughout her life, she said she has always had some minor health problems, but her major health problem was always her debilitating migraines which continued to develop.
“In the last three years or so I have really gone downhill,” Ebelhar said.
As an 18-year owner of her own business, The Red Door salon and boutique, she said she would sit in multiple doctor’s offices crying and begging for help.
“Test after test, misdiagnoses that would only make me sicker,” Ebelhar said.
Until one day, when she was crying and asking for help, the doctor suggested going to Mayo Clinic.
Without hesitation, Ebelhar said yes and the doctor was able to get an appointment at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., within the week. In April 2018, on her 40th birthday, she was at Mayo Clinic having tests run.
Within the first 10 minutes with a neurologist, he diagnosed a brain tumor.
“Talk about a shock. I have had MRI after MRI [in Owensboro] and at Vanderbilt and no one caught it,” Ebelhar said.
The MRI also showed a spot in the top of her neck where spinal fluid was having a hard time getting through. Ebelhar said after meeting with a neurology team, they decided the tumor needed to be addressed first, so on July 24, 2018, Ebelhar had brain surgery.
While in the hospital recovering from brain surgery, doctors discovered she had thyroid cancer.
“I was still recovering from my brain surgery, and I think I missed the whole cancer thing, because I had such a hard time with the brain surgery,” Ebelhar said of the thyroid surgery that was performed six weeks after her brain surgery.
Ebelhar continued to get infections while recovering from her brain surgery and would sometimes be at Mayo Clinic for three weeks at a time. When doctors thought she could handle it, and because she was periodically unable to walk, they performed another surgery — this time on her neck to help with the spinal fluid. This was in November 2018.
“There was a period of time I felt a bit better [and was] able to return to my shop a couple of days a week,” Ebelhar said. “But prior to that, I hadn’t worked since about April.”
One day, she woke to terrible lower back pain but thought she had maybe just pulled a muscle. After six weeks, she went to an orthopedic doctor in Owensboro who said she needed surgery on her back.
Ebelhar went back to Mayo for this surgery, but it was unsuccessful and they had to do another back surgery a week later, which put her in the hospital for 15 days.
Through all of this, Ebelhar’s family and friends have stood by her side.
“My sister Elizabeth has gone with me to almost every appointment I have had and has been there to catch every tear that flows from my eyes,” Ebelhar said. “She lives in Brentwood, Tenn., and has sacrificed her family for me.”
Ebelhar credits her husband with taking care of the kids, his farming job, the house and his busy schedule, along with her dad, her in-laws and her mom, who went on leave from her job to take care of her during her back surgeries and recovery.
Ebelhar said her team at The Red Door “never skipped a beat” without her there and that they all stepped up — and continue to step up — because they know how much her business means to her and the community.
Recently, there was a surprise raffle where every ticket had her family’s name on it. As Scott pulled out the ticket, they handed him a check.
“And I want you to know I had prayed so hard for this exact amount to be able to pay back my credit card for travel back and forth that keeps accumulating,” Ebelhar said.
The community’s kindness is what keeps her going and the encouragement that arrives in the “endless amounts of cards in the mail,” which she hangs on her bedroom doors as a reminder of all of the people who love her, keeps her strong.
“I have cried many nights [asking] ‘why me’, questioning God, feel as if I was losing my faith, angry, hopeless, [and] then there is always that card that shows up in the mail with a message in it. Sometimes from people I don’t even know and it keeps me going,” Ebelhar said. “Or one of my boys laying their hands over my head and saying ‘don’t cry momma, let’s pray.”
Ebelhar said this has been very hard for her children to witness, especially when she was unable to walk.
“But my boys that are still at home have become the most loving, compassionate, little boys you will ever meet,” Ebelhar said.
She said her girls are older and understand a little bit better.
Ebelhar said that having five major surgeries in a year has been tough, and she may have to have another due to a new brain tumor that is resting on her eye chasm. She returns to The Mayo Clinic in July to discuss her options.
Just this week, she was able to walk without her walker, and she has physical therapy twice a week to strengthen her back.
“I do know that God is in control and loves me and my family more than any human could possibly understand,” Ebelhar said.
