Kindergartener Decorated Her Town With Ribbons, Sold Lemonade To Support Sick Teacher

By Mike Perleberg Moores Hill Elementary School teacher Elizabeth Kruetzkamp with kindergarten students Izzy Russell and Maddie Lanham, who set up a lemonade stand to raise money for Kruetzkamp after she contracted a flesh-eating disease. Photo provided. (Moores Hill, Ind.) – When six-year-old Izzy Russell learned that her kindergarten teacher was gravely ill, she told her mom she need to do something. Just a couple days after Moores Hill Elementary School let out for summer break in June, teacher Elizabeth Kruetzkamp became extremely sick. “I got out of school on Friday before Memorial Day. By Sunday I had a 103-degree fever. By Sunday night I was just about dead,” she recalls. Kruetzkamp went to Dearborn County Hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with necrotizing fasciitis – a flesh eating disease that had infected her thigh. As doctors performed surgery to remove the infected area from her leg and treated her with “last resort” antibiotics, Kruetzkamp was put into a medically induced coma to allow her body to fight the infection and spare her the intense pain. She remained comatose for 2 ½ weeks. The grim news made its way to her Moores Hill Elementary co-workers and students, including Izzy, a student in Kruetzkamp’s K-1st class that school year. “When we found out that she was sick, my daughter was devastated,” says Misty Russell. “My daughter really thought a lot of her this year at school, so right away when I was telling Izzy about it she said ‘I want to go see her.’” Kruetzkamp was comatose as her son, Adam, graduated from East Central High School in June. Photo provided. The youngster couldn’t pay her teacher a visit in the hospital. Being put under, Kruetzkamp wouldn’t have been able to acknowledge her anyway. But Mom had an idea for Izzy. They decided to make flowers and bows for Mrs. Kruetzkamp. The decorations had to be purple, Moores Hill Elementary’s primary school color. The bows were hung on signs and posts throughout the tiny Dearborn County town. “We had decorated the school pretty heavily as well, and around the flower beds and around the flag pole,” says Russell. Izzy and another friend, Maddie Lanham, even set up a cute, little lemonade stand outside the Moores Hill Fire Department during the annual town yard sale. They raised $76 to help their teacher with her medical expenses. Elizabeth’s family went to meet with Izzy during the ordeal. The girl’s seemingly small actions gave them hope that Elizabeth would recover. “She asked about me every single day,” the teacher says. Kruetzkamp would eventually wake from the state of coma, then enter a lengthy rehabilitation process. Part of her leg is missing. The coma initially left her unable to walk or even touch her hand to her nose. Phone calls with Izzy provided encouragement. Most importantly, Kruetzkamp is alive and trying to return to a normal life. She continues to recover at her home in Bright. She drove a car for the first time since the illness last week and just attended a baby shower. Her goal is to return to the classroom when the new school year begins next month. That’s when she will get to reunite with Izzy face-to-face. “What she did for me was giving me strength to get up and walk again. It’s been a long seven weeks,” says Elizabeth. To say Kruetzkamp’s summer didn’t go as she expected is to put it lightly. She had planned to spend time with her 12-year-old son Noah and prepare for next school year. She even missed the high school graduation of her oldest son, Adam. So how did Kruetzkamp contract the flesh-eating disease? It’s impossible to know, but she speculates that it may have had something to do with an infected toenail she had noticed on her foot a few days before her hospitalization. The sign at Moores Hill Elementary School. Photo provided.