Help my mom through dialysis
Donation protected
Hi everyone,
My mother is an incredible woman. She is a teacher in Corpus Christ, TX, and she was also a paramedic for most of my life. She and my stepdad (also a paramedic) used to work as flight paramedics, saving lives while risking their own in a helicopter.
My stepdad, my sister and her wife, and their child (my nephew) live at home with my mother. My sister and her wife are both nurses, and so she has an incredible support system surrounding her.
Despite all of this, her health has been on the decline for the last couple of years. She has been described by more than one physician as a 'medical anomaly - meaning none of the specialists she has seen have been able to provide her with an adequate diagnosis.
On the third day of my visit, her health began to decline rapidly. She was having a very difficult time breathing, mostly due to the excess fluid built up in her torso and extremities (edema). My sister and I stayed with her throughout the night to monitor her, but she was in bad shape. Her blood oxygen level sank into the low 80's (anything below 93 is considered critical), and my sister and I thought she should go to the emergency room right away. We administered albuterol breathing treatments to her until the urgent care opened and we took her there as the door opened that morning.
She was advised to go to the ER, and so we took her there. The ER admitted her for 2 days but extended that to a week once they came back with a diagnosis. It turns out my mother was taking on excess fluid because she was in full-on renal failure - her kidneys were said to only be functioning at 12%. On top of that, she had developed congestive heart failure, so her heart was not able to pump blood adequately to the rest of her body. This is why she is always cold, always covered with a blanket, because she has no profusion.
Although the diagnosis was grim, there was a bit of relief felt by all of us in finally having a diagnosis.
The doctors told her that she needed to go on dialysis, or she wouldn't last too much longer. So she agreed to the treatment, which meant that she needed surgery to have a port installed in her chest.
I was down there for about 4 weeks, and during this time, I basically turned into a full-time nurse myself. I started making green drinks for her so that she could have adequate nutrition - she had not been eating at all due to all of the excess fluid she'd taken on. After her first few dialysis treatments, the process had removed a little over 20 lbs. of excess fluid from her body. Her appetite returned, and her mobility has gotten so much better in this short time period.
When I first got there, she struggled to walk from her bedroom to the couch (we're talking less than 20 ft., if that...). She would use the walls to keep her balance, and she was incredibly winded and exhausted from that short walk. Her first couple of trip to dialysis, and her return trip from the hospital, she could barely make it in from the garage to the couch. She would have to stop and lean over to keep from passing out, and when she did begin to walk she was incredibly wobbly and required the assistance of a walker and a person near her.
Since receiving her diagnosis and care plan, we have filed her paperwork for retirement - set to activate at the beginning of 2022 - and we have also filed for Family Medical Leave of Absence. All of this seems like it has gone through without issue.
However, my sister and I have been informed that she will not be paid for her time spent on medical leave. That means from now until her retirement hits, she will be without income. My stepdad is retired and he is on a fixed income, and my sister (a nurse) is out of work for another 5 weeks or so as she is recovering from covid. It seems her son and my nephew contracted covid at school and transmitted it to her. So although my mother has an incredible support team around her, my sister can't even walk through a grocery store without becoming short of breath, experiencing tachycardia (accelerated heart rate), and feeling like she's either going to be sick or pass out.
There are talks going on now about what they're going to do - how they're going to make ends meet and if they should sell the house.
I've created this gofundme with the aim of providing my mother and my family financial relief during this interim of her not being paid while on medical leave.
My mother needs to focus on getting better. She needs to focus on her dialysis treatment and her physical therapy. She deserves the chance to save her own life after saving countless lives in the back of an ambulance and riding in a helicopter. She deserves to do all of this while being at home, without the compounding stress that comes with this financial predicament.
Please help in any way that you can - you have my unending gratitude for any amount you can contribute. I want my mother around for a very long time, and she is young enough to recover from this and still have a good quality of life. Ultimately, we will not know for another 2 and 1/2 months if the damage to her kidneys is reversible. All funding will go directly to her to help in her time of need and with any medical debts that will no doubt be accrued during this process.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for sharing this, and thank you for giving any amount to help with this.
I think it's an empirical claim that there are people in this world that mean the world to you - and when those people who mean the world to you need help, you have to be willing to move the world out of the way to get them the help they need. This is my attempt at helping my mother, who means the world to me.
Thank you,
Jules Taylor
My stepdad, my sister and her wife, and their child (my nephew) live at home with my mother. My sister and her wife are both nurses, and so she has an incredible support system surrounding her.
Despite all of this, her health has been on the decline for the last couple of years. She has been described by more than one physician as a 'medical anomaly - meaning none of the specialists she has seen have been able to provide her with an adequate diagnosis.
On the third day of my visit, her health began to decline rapidly. She was having a very difficult time breathing, mostly due to the excess fluid built up in her torso and extremities (edema). My sister and I stayed with her throughout the night to monitor her, but she was in bad shape. Her blood oxygen level sank into the low 80's (anything below 93 is considered critical), and my sister and I thought she should go to the emergency room right away. We administered albuterol breathing treatments to her until the urgent care opened and we took her there as the door opened that morning.
She was advised to go to the ER, and so we took her there. The ER admitted her for 2 days but extended that to a week once they came back with a diagnosis. It turns out my mother was taking on excess fluid because she was in full-on renal failure - her kidneys were said to only be functioning at 12%. On top of that, she had developed congestive heart failure, so her heart was not able to pump blood adequately to the rest of her body. This is why she is always cold, always covered with a blanket, because she has no profusion.
Although the diagnosis was grim, there was a bit of relief felt by all of us in finally having a diagnosis.
The doctors told her that she needed to go on dialysis, or she wouldn't last too much longer. So she agreed to the treatment, which meant that she needed surgery to have a port installed in her chest.
I was down there for about 4 weeks, and during this time, I basically turned into a full-time nurse myself. I started making green drinks for her so that she could have adequate nutrition - she had not been eating at all due to all of the excess fluid she'd taken on. After her first few dialysis treatments, the process had removed a little over 20 lbs. of excess fluid from her body. Her appetite returned, and her mobility has gotten so much better in this short time period.
When I first got there, she struggled to walk from her bedroom to the couch (we're talking less than 20 ft., if that...). She would use the walls to keep her balance, and she was incredibly winded and exhausted from that short walk. Her first couple of trip to dialysis, and her return trip from the hospital, she could barely make it in from the garage to the couch. She would have to stop and lean over to keep from passing out, and when she did begin to walk she was incredibly wobbly and required the assistance of a walker and a person near her.
Since receiving her diagnosis and care plan, we have filed her paperwork for retirement - set to activate at the beginning of 2022 - and we have also filed for Family Medical Leave of Absence. All of this seems like it has gone through without issue.
However, my sister and I have been informed that she will not be paid for her time spent on medical leave. That means from now until her retirement hits, she will be without income. My stepdad is retired and he is on a fixed income, and my sister (a nurse) is out of work for another 5 weeks or so as she is recovering from covid. It seems her son and my nephew contracted covid at school and transmitted it to her. So although my mother has an incredible support team around her, my sister can't even walk through a grocery store without becoming short of breath, experiencing tachycardia (accelerated heart rate), and feeling like she's either going to be sick or pass out.
There are talks going on now about what they're going to do - how they're going to make ends meet and if they should sell the house.
I've created this gofundme with the aim of providing my mother and my family financial relief during this interim of her not being paid while on medical leave.
My mother needs to focus on getting better. She needs to focus on her dialysis treatment and her physical therapy. She deserves the chance to save her own life after saving countless lives in the back of an ambulance and riding in a helicopter. She deserves to do all of this while being at home, without the compounding stress that comes with this financial predicament.
Please help in any way that you can - you have my unending gratitude for any amount you can contribute. I want my mother around for a very long time, and she is young enough to recover from this and still have a good quality of life. Ultimately, we will not know for another 2 and 1/2 months if the damage to her kidneys is reversible. All funding will go directly to her to help in her time of need and with any medical debts that will no doubt be accrued during this process.
Thank you for reading, and thank you for sharing this, and thank you for giving any amount to help with this.
I think it's an empirical claim that there are people in this world that mean the world to you - and when those people who mean the world to you need help, you have to be willing to move the world out of the way to get them the help they need. This is my attempt at helping my mother, who means the world to me.
Thank you,
Jules Taylor
Organizer
Jules Taylor
Organizer
Esopus, NY