Jan Kusko, the manager of the Plaza East Office Center in downtown Milwaukee, used to be a workaholic. Her workdays usually started at 5:15 a.m. and ran until 7 p.m. She says her job of running the 500,000-square-foot office complex located at the corner of Kilbourn Avenue and Broadway is similar to “being in charge of a little city.”
However, on March 11, as Kusko was driving home from her family’s cabin in the Wisconsin Dells, her life and her routine changed.
“It was Sunday morning, my small dog was with me and I had driven two hours,” she said. “I was on Highway 60 in Hartford, in the home stretch to (her home in) Menomonee Falls when I hit a patch of black ice.”
Kusko described the following moments as “surreal.” Her Chevrolet Trailblazer careened out of control, crossed the median into the westbound lanes and flipped onto its roof.
No other vehicle was involved in the accident.
“Everything was quiet and I was upside down,” Kusko recalled. She unbuckled her seatbelt, landing on her stomach in the van. She was alone with her 17-pound Bichon, Molly, in a car carrier in the back.
“People responded very quickly,” said Kusko. “I never lost consciousness, but I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened.”
Kusko shakes while recalling the accident. She remembers hearing someone saying, “The roads should be salted” and “The vehicle should be stabilized.”
Her dog was fine. But Kusko was taken by ambulance to Hartford Hospital, where she had to be treated for a broken left shoulder, an injured scapula, severe tissue damage, bruised ribs and a deep cut to her left elbow.
A series of x-rays, personal physicians and referrals to specialists led to shoulder replacement surgery six days after the accident. Kusko gave herself a window of several weeks to return to work. Today, she grins and grimaces with a heavy-hearted sigh about how naive she was to the painful recovery process that awaited her.
“I foolishly thought that a couple weeks from the accident I would be back at work, and that would be the end of it,” she said. “It just didn’t work out that way.”
Tishman Speyer Properties LP, the owner of Plaza East, provided Kusko with a home laptop computer, but she credited her co-workers with keeping her “little city” functioning.
“It wasn’t a point of me asking for help,” she said. “We work together. We’re friends, and they immediately stepped up and were willing to do everything to help me recover and keep the building going.”
The optimistic Kusko continued to tell her staff that she would be back soon.
“Every time I missed an anticipated return date, you know they felt anxiety like I did,” said Kusko.
Kusko went through a roller coaster of emotions, from dramatic realizations to questioning horrific possibilities.
“I kept thinking about what could have happened and how it could have been worse,” she said. “Then I started asking why this happened to me.”
During the course of her recovery, Kusko returned to the hospital several times with drug-related complications from Oxycodone and a medical issue that she dealt with six months before the accident.
“I had a kidney stone attack and had to have surgery to remove it,” she said. “But everything becomes more of an ordeal when you have a shoulder that’s out of commission.”
Kusko nervously laughs about how, at 58-years-old, she felt she was falling apart.
“And I still do (feel that way) at times, but it really tested my will, especially with the medication,” she said.
Kusko finally returned to work on June 8.
“I came back on a part-time basis, and it was tough,” she said.
Kusko tired easily and needed to work on her stamina.
“I had so many well-wishers, and the regional office out of Chicago was tremendously supportive,” she said. “I got a lot of telephone calls, flowers and well wishes. It’s amazing when you have a serious situation how people come out of the woodwork and call or send a card. It’s amazing.”
Today, nine months after the accident, Kusko gets to work at 7 a.m., instead of 5:15 a.m.
“I’ve cut back,” she admitted. “It’s one of those things that’s come out of it, I’m going to get done what I can in that time frame, and it’s going to be hard work, and it’s going to be good, but I have to think a little bit more of myself.”
Kusko can still only sleep on her back. She has restrictions with the strength in her left arm, primarily with a limited range of movement. She is still not able to raise her left hand as far as her right.
Furthermore, getting behind the wheel of her car in the winter months is a recurring psychological test.
“I won’t go out when it’s snowing, because I have a fear this could happen again,” she said.
Kusko deems herself a work in progress and says she doesn’t take anything for granted.
“Anybody who has a serious illness or a bad accident, you reevaluate how things are going and think about what’s really important,” she said. “You come to your family and your faith and your own well being.”
Kusko always considered herself to be a workaholic, and she still believes her job and performance are important.
“But not as important as taking care of yourself and your family,” she said. “Your health, that’s the utmost important, without a doubt.”
