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Mostly Cloudy A special holiday gift for an East Meadow family
Samantha Eisenberg returns home, continues to battle back from injuries
Nothing could top the present that Robin Boyajian received in time for the holiday season. This gift came well in advance of Christmas and Hanukkah. In fact, it arrived on Oct. 1.
It was Boyajian’s daughter, Samantha Eisenberg, who finally returned to her home in East Meadow. Eisenberg, 21, spent months in hospitals and rehabilitation centers after being knocked into a coma in a serious automobile accident near Buffalo in February. She was a passenger with four other students headed from a friend’s house in Rochester back to campus at Buffalo State when their car collided with a truck.
“We are so thankful to have her home for the holidays,” Boyajian said of her daughter, one of two children from her first marriage. “It could have been a very different holiday season for us.”
After the accident, Eisenberg, a junior at Buffalo State, was treated in a Rochester hospital, and Boyajian maintained a blog to keep friends, family members and the community updated on her daughter’s status. In the first couple of months, she showed signs of emerging from her coma by responding to commands and softly muttering words. But her brain had been seriously injured, and there was a long way to go.
Interest in the young woman’s plight spread, and members of the community stepped in to assist the family during an emotionally and financially taxing time. Several of Eisenberg’s friends teamed up to sell bracelets sporting the phrase “Every little thing is going to be all right.” Hundreds of bracelets were purchased by students from her alma mater, East Meadow High School, where she graduated in 2007, and their families.
Robert and Darlene Dachille, friends of the family, organized a fundraising dinner in May, hosted by La Novella Ristorante in East Meadow. An EMHS teacher, Evelyn Sideri, and her students organized a walk-a-thon in June to raise funds and awareness of Eisenberg’s situation.
Those were only a few of the numerous efforts to assist the family with her long-term rehabilitation.
