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The remarkable healing journey of a Maui High School teacher: Family, friends help Aaron Kondo return home

Since he was a young child, Aaron Kondo has lived with muscular dystrophy.

A popular history teacher at Maui High School for 21 years, by his mid-20s, he was eventually diagnosed with a specific form, Emery Dreifuss muscular dystrophy, an extremely rare muscle-wasting disease characterized by muscle weakness and cardiac problems. It impacts around one in every 250,000 people.

"We found out he had a specific form that affects the heart," explained his sister Rachel Kondo, who co-created the hit TV series "Shōgun" with her husband Justin Marks. "Doctors told him then that he would need a transplant before he was 50 years old."

A father to three teens living in Waikapu, Aaron Kondo bravely faced the challenges while continuing to work at Maui High until a series of strokes caused catastrophic brain damage that required neurological intensive care for 56 days.

Now immobile and unable to talk, he can communicate using an Eyegaze Edge device like the one the famous scientist Stephen Hawking used. With this sensor tablet, he can type out words and sentences using his eyes.

Asked a couple of questions, he was able to respond slowly by "typing" each letter.

How did he like help from a visiting physiotherapist?

He typed "excellent."

Kondo's healing journey stands as an extraordinary saga of heartbreak, hope, endurance and resilience. He has been guided by a loving family, the dedication of two sisters, a supportive community, a remarkable angel physiotherapist from London, and the aloha spirit.

Polish-born physiotherapist Agata Szloser met Kondo at a party while visiting her sister on Maui. She volunteered to share her expertise with the family that improved his mobility beyond his doctor's expectations.

"I had been asking for a miracle, something to go right for my brother, and it came in the form of Agata," said Rachel Kondo, who was born and raised on Maui. "Agata was our miracle."

Trained at Poland's Academy of Zamosc, she specializes in neurological disorders.

"Patients with spinal cord injury, with strokes and with any kind of neurological disease," she said. "I really love my work, and whenever I see people in need, I am ready to help. What makes me happy is helping people in need."

Agata shared her expertise with a local team that works with Kondo, including home health aide Joseph Sabia, occupational therapist Chris Strain, physical therapist Sean Strain, and speech and language therapist Ashley Jung.

"Aaron's case is very complex," she said. "I help them to better understand his case and help with a physical and emotional approach. I happened to be in the right place and the right time to help. I offered my help, and the family was very happy with me."

Before the strokes, Kondo had required a defibrillator and pacemaker to help his heart function, and he was seeking a heart transplant.

"In August 2023, he had a procedure at St. Luke's Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, who was going to do the transplant," Rachel Kondo explained. "Then he had his first stroke, so he came back home and did rehabilitation. He could still talk and everything. I couldn't really tell that he had had a stroke. The day he arrived back, he went back to work at Maui High."

On Dec. 23, 2023, while on a brief vacation in Wichita, Kansas, he had a catastrophic stroke. "He was changed, but he really had this drive in him," she recalled. "The fire to talk and to communicate still existed."

By January, he had transferred to a rehabilitation unit "and was starting to walk again," she continued. "He was doing it, and then he had a major brain bleed, and one more brain bleed two days later. So his brain was basically completely flooded with blood. Everything unfortunate happened to him. It was terrible."

Aaron spent most of 2024 "crisscrossing the Midwest, from Nebraska to Iowa, back to Kansas and trying to get as much therapy and rehabilitation, because on Maui we don't have those facilities," she said.

In between a press junket publicizing "Shōgun," Rachel visited her brother in hospital. "I slept in my brother's room with him at the Madonna Rehabilitation center. That was one of the more sobering moments of my life to see what he had to go through. We always knew that his heart's desire would be to come home. I didn't understand just how hard that would be."

Knowing his desire to be back home in Hawaii, Aaron's family began the daunting task of investigating how best to get him here, which was no simple feat.

"He has a very sophisticated wheelchair that weighs over 500 pounds," Rachel said. "It's customized specifically for him and he can't be without it. He's either in a wheelchair or in bed. How do you get the wheelchair on the plane? If it gets damaged, it's a problem because no one lives here who could fix it. He has all of his medical equipment, and he's very sick. It was all very nerve-wracking."

A conventional airline could not meet his medical and physical needs, so Rachel arranged for a private jet.

"At some point my sister and I said this is what money's for. This is why you work hard so that you can spend money on people you love and your family. We scraped everything together and got in contact with a company called FXAIR and they were phenomenal."

Aaron arrived back at his Waikapu home on Dec. 4, 2024, to a jubilant welcome.

"The street was lined with friends and neighbors, the church community, Boy Scouts, the baseball team from Maui High," Rachel said. "He was involved in so many things and people care. That's why he loves this place, because people care the way they do. There's no place like it. And I know because I was gone for over 20 years and I came back to be with my family, my brother in particular."

With Agata's help, Aaron has made significant progress.

"My brother came alive anew," Rachel said. "He began to move his right arm and leg, something we hadn't seen in almost a year."

Pleased by his progress, Szloser said, "he can see hope and the family can see hope. Sometimes when we see someone with such a complex disability, we think that they don't have their personality anymore. I see just a normal person who needs help with his physical body. We laugh, we joke and we cry sometimes."

The family is seeking to improve Aaron's life by investigating the latest therapies. In between mapping out episodes for a possible season two of "Shōgun" and working on a new film, Rachel has been "researching things like gene editing and slicing. I'm trying to reach out to specialists who understand Emery Dreifuss muscular dystrophy."

Feeling optimistic about her brother's future, Rachel said, "I'm not going to give up because he hasn't given up."