Transitional care in Denver; donations have really dropped off. This is Roy's son, Wings's nephew. This is family. Please help.

Wings on the right; his nephew Ona on the left.
I took that seven years ago at the family memorial
for Ona's dad, Wings's brother Roy.

UPDATE:  One is now in transitional care in Denver, with intensive rehabilitation and a LOT of medical treatments ongoing. It's expensive, and donations have really dropped off — until three days ago, none of ten days straight. The day before yesterday was us, for another $100; can you match it? He's now just over $37.5K; can we make it $40K before the weekend's out? It's still a long, long way from goal (which is going to have to be raised to meet the new conditions), and he's going to need every possible cent to keep things on track as he works on his recovery (and he's on the road now; tiny, tiny changes every day that are nonetheless huge victories, all thanks to transfer to facility where he's getting proper care). So please, please keep sharing it and kick in here and there as you're able. I will try to have a real updated post by next week.


I think most everyone knows by now that Ona Bernal, the son of Wings's late brother Roy, is gravely ill. When you hear the phrase "catastrophic illness?" This is what that means.

You can read all the details in the longer post, found here. But it's time for an update, because fundraising has mostly stalled, and this is, as I said above, a truly catastrophic situation.

Around the first of August, Ona was bitten by a mosquito carrying West Nile virus. In Ona, the virus turned into West Nile encephalitis. His formal diagnosis is West Nile meningoencephalitis with respiratory failure and flaccid paralysis. What that means, in practical terms, is that a ventilator is doing his breathing for him most of the time, and most of his body is paralyzed; he can move his eyes, his head and neck a little, his hands and feet a little. It also meant more than six weeks in ICU, with everything touch and go; now he's in a "transitional" facility of sorts, such as is available in New Mexico. Where he needs to be is a neuro rehab facility that can help his body relearn how to respond properly to signals, but there isn't one in this state. There's a good one in Denver, but to get there (aside from the financial costs), he first has to be able to spend a certain number of consecutive hours breathing without help from the ventilator. He can't do that with the treatment available in Albuquerque, and so he needs to go to what's known as an acute long-term transitional facility that has the resources and expertise to help him transition from the vent to, likely, a CPAP, and then eventually (we hope) to nothing at all for a good chunk of each day. That facility is also in Denver.

It's a logistical nightmare, in medical, transport, and insurance-coverage terms. And it's all going to be hugely expensive. The short version: We have to get him to Denver, first to the acute long-term facility, and then to the neuro rehab facility. That's going to require much more money than anyone in the family has (to say nothing of supporting his wife and children in the meantime). Like I said, go here for the full story. Then go here to donate to the family's GoFundMe. We've given, and we'll be giving more as we can. But donations have slowed drastically over the last week or two; some days, there've been none at all. And that's not going to be enough.

So please share the GoFundMe link. Because this is Roy's son, Wings's nephew. This is family. Please help.

Chi miigwech and ta'a.