Implant gives Highland Park shooting survivor new life

In January, Liz Roberts Turnipseed did something that would have been impossible 18 months earlier. She and her husband Ian traveled to Jamaica and snorkeled in the Caribbean Sea.

“I never thought I could do that before the device,” she said.

She is referring to the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) stimulator that doctors surgically implanted in her lower back last November. The surgery successfully reduced the chronic pain she has suffered since July 4, 2022, when a gunman shot at spectators gathered for the annual Independence Day parade in Highland Park.

Life-changing tragedy

Turnipseed was one of nearly fifty people injured in that shooting. Seven people were killed.

The 2022 parade would be Turnipseed’s 3-year-old daughter Sonia’s first. But the shots that rang out around 10:14 a.m. foiled their plans.

Turnipseed heard the shots and turned to look at Sonia when the force of a bullet threw her to the ground. Then a second bullet hit her.

She remembered a “sharp, searing, terrible pain” and not being able to stand. Her husband covered Sonia with his body as he tried to get his wife to safety.

“In a split second we decided he had to get Sonia out of there,” Turnipseed said. “He said, ‘I’ll come back for you’ and he ran away with her to find her safety.”

“He was a hero to our family that day,” she said.

Ian Turnipseed saw Suzi Zelinsky crouched behind a metal and concrete bench and asked her to take Sonia. She agreed, told him her name and protected the girl with her body as Turnipseed ran back to his wife. He found her with Lake County Sheriff John Idleburg, who applied pressure to her wounds.

Ian assured Liz that their daughter was safe, exchanged phone numbers with Zelinsky and arranged for her and her husband, Dean, to drive Sonia to their home.

“She (Sonia) remembers that they had two nice dogs and she would drink a glass of water” from an actual glass instead of a sippy cup, Turnipseed recalls.

The ‘always chill’ Sonia was surprisingly resilient. Her mother, less so.

Turnipseed was taken to Northwestern Medicine Lake Forest Hospital with gunshot wounds to her leg and pelvis. Surgery was not necessary as the bullets missed vital organs, but shrapnel remained in her body and the bullets caused significant nerve and tissue damage. It took months for her wounds to heal.

“The first few weeks I was pretty much immobile,” Turnipseed said.

Medication kept her comfortable during the acute phase of her recovery, which took place at her Highland Park home, where a physical therapist taught her how to stand, sit and climb stairs properly.

Rapeseed used a walker for a few months and then switched to a cane.

“The stick became a buddy,” she said. “Every time I left (the house) I had it with me.”

But the ever-present pain limited her activities. She could not stand or walk for a long time. And she couldn’t play with her daughter in the playground. Instead, she watched her from a park bench.

Rapeseed had to carefully consider each activity or it would worsen her pain. If I do this, everything will be fine, she thought to herself. If I try, I won’t.

But the pain persisted. Her doctors advised her to see Dr. Jason Ross, an anesthesiologist and pain management specialist from Northwestern Medicine. They first met in January 2023.

Finally relief

“Chronic pain is one of the most burdensome problems in healthcare today,” says Ross. “We spend more money on pain management than on heart disease and cancer.”

They started with injection therapy, Turnipseed recalled, a less invasive treatment. But the relief was temporary.

Then Ross proposed DRG, a version of neuromodulation pain management similar to spinal cord stimulation (a procedure that dates back about 60 years).

In late 2023, Turnipseed agreed to the two-stage procedure, which involves implanting an electrical device that, according to the Mayo Clinic, “scrambles pain signals that travel through the spinal cord to the brain.”

“We place electrodes behind the spinal cord, which changes the way pain is modulated,” Ross said of the procedure, which has been available in the US since 2016. “There are four electrodes in her at four locations in her spine.”

Using an iPhone app or iPod, Turnipseed adjusts the stimulation setting of each lead to target pain in a specific area, he said.

Rapeseed underwent the procedure last November. It started with a weeklong trial period, during which the leads were implanted where they are now, Ross said.

“They were protruding from her skin and connected to an external battery,” he said. After the trial, “we internalized the entire system.”

The relief was immediate.

“She was almost in tears in the recovery room,” Ross said. “It was the first time she had gotten relief since the shooting happened.”

“I’m so glad I could do something to help her,” he said. “Restoring normalcy to her life is one of the greatest achievements of my career so far.”

Six months after the operation, Turnipseed has more stamina. She walks her dogs and jogs with her daughter. She can cook while standing and wear high heels for short periods of time. On days when she exerts herself too much, she bounces back faster.

As for resuming operations, “the sky is the limit,” Ross said. “I’ve had patients in similar situations who were skiing, playing sports and running.”

Turnipseed says she is still on medication and is not yet “as good as new.” But, she says, “I’m miles ahead of where I was on July 5, 2022.”

Turnipseed shares her story in part to dispel misconceptions about chronic pain and raise awareness about a condition that affects millions of people. Most suffer in silence, she said.

She also wants to remind people that for survivors of gun violence, suffering — physical, emotional and financial — continues long after the TV cameras are gone.

“I’m lucky. I have good health insurance,” she says. “But the cost of months or years of medical treatment is high… It’s a constant reminder of what happened and the trauma we experienced.

“There are no robust resources available to the population (survivors),” she said, “and because of gun violence in our country, that population is growing every day.”