This is family. Please share; please donate if you're able.

[Note: I'm bumping this post to the top of my site every day, at least until we get some real traction on the GoFundMe. (Two days ago, there was not a single donation; yesterday, there was one. It's going to take a lot more than this just for short-term care and rehab.) The regular posts from NDN Silver, etc., still appear here daily; just scroll below this one to find them each day. After, of course, you share this post and the GoFundMe link. Also, just in case folks are wondering how prevalent this might become: Last weekend, the Taos News reported online that three cases of West Nile virus have just been confirmed in Taos County.]

Yes, I know you all know the handsome dude on the right. The handsome dude on the left, not so much, although you can probably tell that these two are related.

Those of you who've been reading here long enough will recall, a little over seven years ago now, when I posted a memorial piece by Wings in honor of his older brother Roy, who had walked on on the morning of June 3rd of that year. It was a difficult time, and his absence still leaves a big void. At the time, though, it did give Wings a chance to reconnect with Roy's children — including his oldest, Ona, who you see on the left. [He looks so much like his father . . . .]

And now Ona needs all the help we can give him. So does his wife, Mendy, and their two children. [If you want to skip to the link, here it is.]

Ona and Mendy live south of Albuquerque, in the Los Lunas area, where Ona works for a manufacturer of medical and pharmaceutical devices and equipment. He's very, very good at what he does; highly knowledgeable, with expertise born of long experience and hard work, and he's respected for it in both his profession and his wider community. They live in an area not far from the Rio Grande, a bosque with a thriving ecosystem (at least in most years). Ona is also an avid hunter and fisherman.

And in the first days of August, Ona was bitten by a mosquito. No big deal, normally; a little itching, a little irritation, right? Probably don't even notice it.

Unless the mosquito carries West Nile.

Yup, it's a thing, even here in Northern New Mexico, although it's been mostly confined to horses. But however rare around here, there have been cases of people contracting it, and Ona is now one of them. 

And in his case, it turned into West Nile encephalitis.

Encephalitis in any form can have catastrophic consequences. In Ona's case, the clinical diagnosis is West Nile virus resulting in meningoencephalitis with respiratory failure and flaccid paralysis. After more than a month in ICU and on a ventilator to help him breathe, Ona, doctors, and family are all working on his recovery. But he's got a long, long journey ahead of him. And even with health insurance, the good kind? The costs for his recovery are themselves going to be catastrophic. Mendy has left work to care for him; she's being relieved off and on throughout the week by Ona's three sisters and their mom. Ona and Mendy have two children in high school, and the family is now without both sources of income for the foreseeable future.

There is another complicating factor here, as well: Because of the effects of the meningoencephalitis, Ona is still on a ventilator, and if they are unable to get him off it, he will need to be transferred to a facility that specializes in neurological rehabilitation. There is no such facility anywhere in New Mexico; one of the best, Craig, is in Denver, and that is where his medical team is looking at possibly sending him if necessary. Their insurance will not cover the transport costs, and Mendy has already been quoted a range between $10K and $20K just for transport alone. And the prognosis is a difficult one: It may be months before he can breathe on his own again, possibly years for what as full a recovery as is possible under these conditions.

Recently, Ona's coworkers set up a GoFundMe account on his behalf. The goal is set at $50,000, but frankly, that's a very conservative estimate. They're already talking about adjusting upwards, and rightly so. But for now, the goal remains at $50K, and while they've made very good early progress, this is a long road, too. 

We've already donated. We'll do more as we're able. But this is very big financial mountain, and the family can't scale it without a lot of outside help. So here's where I ask all of you to share the link to Ona's GoFundMe, here. It's also where I ask you to donate if you can: $20, $10, $5, $1 — it all helps. Obviously, if you can afford to give three figures, or even four, that will do wonders to lessen the load Mendy's carrying right now, and free Ona's thoughts to focus strictly on his recovery. But whatever the size of your donation, just know that you'll have the gratitude of Wings and me, and the family, too. 

Again, here's that GoFundMe link. Please share. Please donate if you're able. Their PayPal account is under the e-mail address mendy_ona [at] hotmail [dot] com (that's an underscore between the names); please add a note to specify. If you'd prefer to send a check, please make it out to Mendy Bernal; contact me at Ajijaakwe [at] gmail [dot] com (or by FB or Twitter DM, if you know me on there) for their mailing address. This is family, and we're all scrambling to do everything we can to facilitate Ona's full recovery.

Chi miigwech and ta'a.

My sister-in-law's family needs a hand. We're in.

This beautiful woman is my sister-in-law, Nes. She's Wings's younger sister, and grandmother to the three equally beautiful little girls in the photo. I love them all very much. And Nes, her husband Daniel, and the girls need our help. 

Nes and Daniel are raising all three girls, ages 7, 8, and 9, full-time. That means everything from ordinary parenting to school, student-teacher conferences, extracurricular and other activities and lessons, and traditional education and cultural and spiritual practices. Nes sews all the girls' traditional clothes, and she and Daniel make sure they're raised wholly immersed in their culture and language. For a woman in my age cohort (50s), that's a lot, especially considering that Nes works full-time as a home health aide, which is heavy labor that requires a lot of lifting.

In just over two weeks, that all changes.

On November 10th, Maya, the 8-year-old on the left in the photo, has to have corrective eye surgery. On November 15th, Nes herself has to have surgery to repair three giant tears to the rotator cuff of her dominant arm. She will be out of work for quite a while. In the meantime, Daniel, who was working as a tour shuttle driver, lost his job (a casualty of the economy here), and while he's lined one up as a school bus driver, he has to get training for an amendment to his CDL — and the first day of training is the same day as Nes's surgery.

Being Native is expensive. It's especially expensive for traditionals, and Nes and her family are very much traditional. Add to that the expense of raising three girls, and money is always tight at best. We always try to help them out as we can, but given our own situation, it's never enough. Now, when both of them will be temporarily out of work just as we head into winter and the holiday season, things could easily turn very grim indeed, and very fast.

Just over two weeks from now, she'll be in for surgery, then going to physical therapy and working on her recovery, and money will be more scarce than ever because she'll be out of work. Around that same time, we can expect the weather to turn exceptionally cold, and the snows to begin. Nes and Daniel and the girls are going to need help keeping the lights and heat on and food on the table, not to mention all the other expenses of raising three girls in elementary school. So we're trying to raise $10,000 over the next seven weeks or so to try to get them through the end of the year, in the hopes that by the new year, she'll be fully recovered and back to work, and Daniel's job will be well under way. I've set up a YouCaring page for their family. I'm listed as the organizer, because Nes wants the e-mail notifications to come to me; she doesn't have ready access to a computer. But that's the only thing that will come to me; the page is set up to route all donations straight to her checking account. 

We've started the process off with $50. We were blessed a few days ago with a commission for some work by Wings, and this is coming out of that. We'll be helping in other ways, too, in the weeks to come. This is family, so we're asking everyone to help us share the link to their page, and if you're able and feel so inclined, to kick in a little, too. Nineteen people matching our donation puts them 1/10 of the way there.

Many thanks to everyone who helps, whether by donating or simply by spreading the word.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner

This Is My Sister. She Needs Our Help.

Photo copyright River and Charles Curtis-Stanley, 2014; all rights reserved.

This is Nishime, "my little sister." Most folks know her as Kitsap River.

Yes, I know we don't look much alike — that whole coloring thing — but just because we're not blood doesn't mean we're not family. River and Charles honored us by adopting us as family within the way of their own tradition, as brother and sister, years ago.

And now my family needs help, so that they don't lose their home.

The seeds of this were planted three years ago, in 2011, at the very same time that the seeds of something wonderful and life-giving were planted. In fact, they're the same seeds. But they were planted in the soil of a land that doesn't have a proper safety net, particularly not for people with catastrophic health conditions, and so, as usual, the fruit winds up growing in two directions: one branch is nutritious; the other, poisonous.

The nutritious, life-giving fruit was the new kidney she received early that year. If you recall, I spent just over a month up in Washington with them, to help with driving and lifting and all the things she was barred from doing for those weeks. [I didn't actually do all that much, but it was a lovely break for me, and at least I could keep her company in all those waiting rooms.]

The poisonous fruit was toxic levels of debt. Despite receiving disability and having health insurance through Charles's employer, any undertaking of the magnitude of an organ transplant means huge costs for the patient and her family. Costs that aren't covered by any program, agency, or safety net. And add to that their particular situation: four days a week of additional fares on the ferry, plus gas and parking, because the facility is the University Medical Center across the sound, is just one small example of the kinds of costs that are unavoidable.

So they delayed that year's property taxes on the house, thinking that things would right themselves the following year. But it's been one thing after another (isn't it always?), and the constant daily follow-up needed to maintain her transplant (and therefore stay alive) have turned out to be much more daunting that anyone could have anticipated. [I suspect this is one of those situations where it's best that you don't know just how daunting it will be, or you'd never go through with it, and we need her here with us.]

At any rate, if I understand this correctly, there's a wrinkle in Washington State law that requires a property owner to pay a year's worth of back taxes in one lump sum — no payment schedules or other arrangements. That means that they must come up with the whole amount, $3,700, or lose their home on the auction block come April. They've managed to put aside the lion's share of it: $2,900, give or take a couple of hundred, depending on other needs over the remainder of this month.  But they're still short $800, at a a minimum. Say $1,000, to be safe.

Actually, what River won't tell you, but I will, is that they've been juggling frantically for so long to make this work that it works out to more than $1,000, because the power bill is past due and there are other expenses mounting. But $1,000 saves their home. 

And saves her life. Actually, Charles's life, as well. Because he has chronic health issues, too. And if they lose their home, I know that River, with her transplant issues, will not survive homelessness.

And I can't let that happen.

I know we're in for something.  I don't know how much yet, because I have to go through our own finances today after the farrier leaves and see what we can juggle. But I'm asking you to consider kicking in a few bucks to help save their home. Here's her GoFundMe page. If 20 of us can give $50 — if 40 of us can give $25 — it's done. They can write the check in a few days, and I can breathe easier knowing that my family still has a roof over their heads.

And if you can't donate, please simply share this with everyone in your networks, both on- and offline.

Chi miigwech.