High school friends now patient, caregiver

Kathryn Gaffney heard the awful news through Facebook. Her former high school buddy, Leon Shambroom, a popular musician and DJ, had been overcome by smoke inhalation in a July house fire in south Minneapolis. Asleep on the second floor, he was not burned, but suffered severe brain injury because of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning.

"I was angry that it happened to Leon," Gaffney said. "Everybody loves him so much."

Gaffney also heard that Shambroom spent several weeks at Hennepin County Medical Center before being transported to Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul for more specialized care. On Dec. 3, Gaffney was on duty at Augustana Health Care Center in Minneapolis, where she is a trained medication assistant, when she heard nurses moving a new patient onto her floor -- Leon Shambroom.

"I freaked," she said. "I ran over to his mom and said, 'I know Leon, from high school.'"

Once friends, they are bonded again, but in a vastly different way.

"I give him his medicine, get him dressed, feed him breakfast," Gaffney, 27, said of the 24-year-old Shambroom, who is responsive to voices and music but can't talk or walk. She helps fasten and unfasten his arm and leg splints, too, to help treat dystonia, a muscle disorder. Even when she's assigned to other patients on the floor, "I'll stop by his room and help out," said Gaffney, who is working toward a nursing degree at MCTC. "I think he knows who I am."

Gaffney's presence is tremendous comfort to Shambroom's parents, Paul Shambroom, a well-known Twin Cities photographer, and Joan Rothfuss, a freelance art curator and writer.

Gaffney was a junior at Southwest High School in Minneapolis in 2000 when Shambroom was a freshman. They became fast friends, playing together in concert band (he was first-chair trumpet, she was tenor saxophone), and studying Japanese.

"He was a little nerdy, but he got along with everybody," Gaffney said. "He was outgoing, kind, fun. He'd practice his DDR [Dance Dance Revolution] moves in the band room," she said, "just to get us to laugh."

The two lost touch after she graduated in 2002, until "the whole big Facebook thing" reconnected them. After high school, Shambroom worked in food delivery while pursuing a degree in urban studies from the University of Minnesota. He also drove a metro bus. Seeking adventure, he moved to Oakland in 2009 with a friend. After nine months, he moved back to the Twin Cities to continue his budding techno-music career. He'd been living in the house with four other people for just two weeks when the fire struck.

It started on the first-floor porch, possibly because of a cigarette on a sofa, Joan said. Only one other roommate was home at the time and escaped safely through a window. Leon's parents got the horrible call five hours later.

"The first week was really, really tense," Joan said, as they waited to learn whether his brain would swell. There were CAT scans and MRIs and machines sucking black soot out of his formerly healthy lungs.

"There's a lot of room for hope," Paul said.

Joan agrees. "Doctors tell us it's like the stock market," she said. "Historically, it's an upward trend."

They come to Augustana every day, often tag-teaming. Joan brings her work and finds a quiet spot to plug in her computer. Paul brings work-related materials to read.

"His parents are amazing," Gaffney said. "They make him homemade smoothies and soups with just the right consistency. They've arranged their lives around Leon's care, professionally and personally."

Leon's room is cheery and colorful, with Tibetan prayer flags above his bed, and Simpsons characters on the shelf. "Very Leon," Gaffney said.

One friend is a constant. "I get along really well with him," said Gaffney, who works three days a week and every other weekend. She's been Employee of the Month twice.

Gaffney grew up in Minneapolis, the youngest of three sisters. Soft-spoken and nervous about getting too much attention, she has long brown hair pulled back from her face and big, blue eyes. "I don't believe it's a coincidence," she said of Shambroom being in her care. "I believe it's God."

A devout Christian, she prays for him every day. "It's so hard to know what to pray for," she says. "I pray for whatever is best for Leon and his family."

In a recent psychology class, she learned that people in Shambroom's situation are comforted by family and friends from their past. "It helps them remember their identity," she said. "I heard that and it kind of clicked."

Caring for Leon, she said, "is reshaping the way I feel about caring for people. Wow, this is how everyone should be treated, like you were friends in high school."