Stacia and Paul Michael

I am setting up this page for my sister, Stacia, and her son, Paul Michael.  Paul Michael (Pauli) is very sick and currently in a hospital in Florida for congestive heart failure.  Stacia lives here in Indiana and was able to go spend a week with him.  Due to financial strain, missed work and no place to stay, she had to return home.  Bringing Pauli back here to Indiana is really not an option.  Moving him would be hard on him due to his condition and also disrupt his treatment plan and disability application process.  Pauli's heart is in a very weakened state and the damage it has suffered is irrepairable.  His care team is working to keep him stable and possibly prepare him for a heart transplant.  The goal is to raise enough money for Stacia to return to Florida to be with him.   A mother needs to be with her son.  I am asking for donations to cover travel and living expenses for her to return to be with him, care for him and help him navigate through this process.   She will need money for travel, food and living arrangements.  I'm asking for your donations to help make this happen.
Anything you can give will be so very greatly appreciated.

 I'm sharing the following with you from Stacia's blog...

"Measured Breath"  At twenty-three, my son was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, a condition in which the heart becomes weakened and fluid builds up in and around the lungs. This creates pressure on the heart muscle, as well as a constant feeling of drowning which, essentially, he is. For the past eight years, as I watch him go about his days and attempt a normal lifestyle, every breath is measured, counted, treasured. The very act of drawing a breath that is deep and life-sustaining is rare; his lungs hunger for more, beg for it, but space is limited.

Until the time of his diagnosis, the act of breathing seemed to be a given. The human body is designed with a motherboard of automatic responses, allowing our hearts to beat and our lungs to function separately from our conscious thoughts. They are on autopilot and we are not required to remind ourselves to take a drag of oxygen every few moments. Until he became so ill, we feasted on our air supply as if it were an endless smorgasbord.

But now, my son’s breathing has become a tangible commodity, to be counted out like coins, which he regularly deposits in an account that charges outrageous fees and accrues no interest. And because of this, I have begun to count my own breaths; to ponder on that space between breaths, those beats of time when our bodies are soaking up the essential components of the gulp we just took and expelling the unusable chaff. To put these moments into a lyrical cadence, scratch them out on paper, and offer them up as a ritualistic sacrifice as a way to ease the ache that pulls at my chest and tangles my thoughts. And to help me to continue breathing.