There are some memories that are too difficult for a woman named Jenn Ashcraft to speak about as she battles a frightening illness. With nowhere to be but her hospital bed, the Arizona resident can’t help but think about the two tragedies that could have brought her here.
“This has been a freight train that came,” Ashcraft said.
Ashcraft, 60, survived both terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. First, in 1993, a bomb was set off below the north tower.
“We felt the impact. I literally felt my flesh move from my skeletal being, really, ” Ashcraft said.
She said she was there again when planes were flown into both towers on Sept. 11, 2001. “I was walking towards the towers. I saw the first plane hit,” Ashcraft said.
Ashcraft moved to Prescott, Arizona, and began volunteering for the American Red Cross. “It was a way for me to heal and to honor all of those firefighters that lost their lives,” Ashcraft said.
That’s where she met her husband, Tom Ashcraft, the father of one of the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots killed while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire in 2013.
“I spent decades organizing blood drives and giving my own blood, and I just need a little back,” Ashcraft said.
Ashcraft said she’s battled ongoing health issues for the past three decades, but her condition took a turn for the worse in the past few weeks.
“My cuticles started bleeding. My skin developed some type of an attack, which now basically — now my antibodies are attacking my body,” Ashcraft said.
She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, which she described as her body burning itself from the inside out.
“My chest, my back, my face, my arms, my legs, and it’s just very painful,” Ashcraft said. “They started giving me antibody replacement, which they’re trying to save my life.”
The World Trade Center Health Program, which provides coverage for survivors and first responders with health issues connected to 9/11, does not currently recognize autoimmune diseases. There have been recent petitions to add them to the list.
“I want to help other survivors,” Ashcraft said.
Ashcraft said she hopes her story highlights the challenges that so many survivors continue to face from tragedies they wish they could forget.
“We shouldn’t go through this alone,” Ashcraft said.