Pullman barber, needs prosthetics. Please Help!
Donation protected
While 2020 has been a year I doubt any of us would wish to repeat, it has been a year that has dealt my brother, Jonathan, an additional nasty blow.
Jon is a barber by trade and has built a successful business, beginning as a mobile barber and working his way up to owning his own shop. He has enjoyed amazing success because he is so passionate about what he does. He currently has nearly 300 five star reviews after just a few years in business. The shutdown of 2020 hurt his business but he was able to continue when things reopened because of his great reputation.
Business was picking up, but another casualty of the lockdown was his family breaking up. His children, who mean the world to him, now live in Arizona with their mom. As if that wasn’t hard enough, in September, his fingers started turning blue and he was in excruciating pain. He went to the emergency room several times and was initially given a diagnosis of Raynaud’s syndrome. However, instead of improving, his condition continued to worsen and his fingers began swelling and rotting away.
At this point, he’s had pretty much every test under the sun; ultrasounds, EKG, angiogram, bloodwork, etc. and the final diagnosis is Buerger’s disease - a rare and horribly debilitating vascular disease that results in circulation to the fingers and toes being restricted which usually results in amputation.
Jon is having a consult with a surgeon at the end of January to discuss amputating several of his fingers. He only has half of one vein in each fingers that is functional (healthy people have two). Without a miracle, he will lose all his fingers. The pain he experiences is tremendous and nothing really helps to relieve it. Even simple things like doing the dishes, putting on socks or getting the mail out of the mailbox results in horrible pain.
He has been trying to work but due to the agonizing pain he often can’t. Even on his good days, he can only do 2 or 3 cuts, rather than the 12-16 that were his norm before all this happened. That simply is not nearly enough to pay his bills or help support his children.
Jon has found some amazing prosthetics that replace fingers and would love to look into those in order to enable him to go back to barbering, but the cost is quite high and the time from amputation to being fitted with and learning to use the prosthetics means a long time with no income.
He would like to relocate to Arizona to be near his kids (not being near them is almost as painful as his disease), get the prosthetics when he is able and someday hopefully open a new shop. In the meantime, he just needs to be able to pay his rent and other bills and support his family. Would you please consider donating to my brother? Anything helps. Thank you!
Jon is a barber by trade and has built a successful business, beginning as a mobile barber and working his way up to owning his own shop. He has enjoyed amazing success because he is so passionate about what he does. He currently has nearly 300 five star reviews after just a few years in business. The shutdown of 2020 hurt his business but he was able to continue when things reopened because of his great reputation.
Business was picking up, but another casualty of the lockdown was his family breaking up. His children, who mean the world to him, now live in Arizona with their mom. As if that wasn’t hard enough, in September, his fingers started turning blue and he was in excruciating pain. He went to the emergency room several times and was initially given a diagnosis of Raynaud’s syndrome. However, instead of improving, his condition continued to worsen and his fingers began swelling and rotting away.
At this point, he’s had pretty much every test under the sun; ultrasounds, EKG, angiogram, bloodwork, etc. and the final diagnosis is Buerger’s disease - a rare and horribly debilitating vascular disease that results in circulation to the fingers and toes being restricted which usually results in amputation.
Jon is having a consult with a surgeon at the end of January to discuss amputating several of his fingers. He only has half of one vein in each fingers that is functional (healthy people have two). Without a miracle, he will lose all his fingers. The pain he experiences is tremendous and nothing really helps to relieve it. Even simple things like doing the dishes, putting on socks or getting the mail out of the mailbox results in horrible pain.
He has been trying to work but due to the agonizing pain he often can’t. Even on his good days, he can only do 2 or 3 cuts, rather than the 12-16 that were his norm before all this happened. That simply is not nearly enough to pay his bills or help support his children.
Jon has found some amazing prosthetics that replace fingers and would love to look into those in order to enable him to go back to barbering, but the cost is quite high and the time from amputation to being fitted with and learning to use the prosthetics means a long time with no income.
He would like to relocate to Arizona to be near his kids (not being near them is almost as painful as his disease), get the prosthetics when he is able and someday hopefully open a new shop. In the meantime, he just needs to be able to pay his rent and other bills and support his family. Would you please consider donating to my brother? Anything helps. Thank you!
Organizer and beneficiary
Holly O'Brien
Organizer
Redding, CA
Jonathan Obrien
Beneficiary