Community Fundraisers: When Your Own Home Is Killing You

Tonya and daughter Miranda.
Photo copyright Tonya Harris, 2014; all rights reserved.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Tonya spent yesterday at the doctor's office, her blood pressure dangerously high, and was not able to take care of pawning what few items she could to pay the application fee and certain bills that are due today. The $25 housing application fee MUST be paid today, or she will lose her chance at getting the mobile home. There are other small bills that must be paid today, too, but those are bills that could be paid directly to the creditor rather than waiting for funds to clear for Tonya to do it. If you can help with any of these, please e-mail Tonya directly at tonyahky [at] yahoo [dot] com to find out how. Personal thanks from me to anyone who can do what I can't, which is to help her out this way this morning.

They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Or, sometimes, it just delays the inevitable. 

This is one instance where I'd like to make sure that it's NOT inevitable.

You may remember that last summer, we mounted a fundraising campaign for Kossack tonyahky, who could not even schedule desperately-needed major surgery without the capacity to hire a full-time caregiver for one of her daughters, who has profound disabilities. We were fortunate enough to raise the funds she needed, and she was able to get the surgery — and then she learned that what she thought was a painful, disabling, potentially dangerous temporary situation was instead both chronic and much more complex. Life-threatening, in fact. 

Last summer, she believed that her only real health problem was an extraordinarily large fibroid tumor that could not be treated; it had to be surgically removed. The pain, fatigue, and illness caused by the tumor eventually made it impossible for her to continue to work, and made day-to-day functioning difficult at the best of times. Now imagine dealing with this while caring for a daughter with a profound case of autism and the special needs and sensitivities that accompany her condition. [You can read all about it in detail here.]

LIFE-THREATENING MEDICAL CONDITIONS

While awaiting surgery, Tonya was given injections of Lupron to try to help slow her heavy bleeding and perhaps shrink the tumor a bit, but she was advised that it would not be enough: The only solution would be a complete hysterectomy. Meanwhile, she grew increasingly ill; by late July, she was forced to see a different doctor just to get the surgery scheduled for September. Her condition reached a critical point during the middle of her fundraiser, forcing her to go to the emergency room at her local medical center, Baptist Hospital. Doctors there diagnosed her condition as severe anemia and told her she needed a blood transfusion. Once it was over, an area Kossack was kind enough to arrange to pick her up at the hospital and take her home. The following day, she heard from her doctor about her next Lupron injection.

And things got really frightening.

Community Fundraisers: More Than Shelter, Home

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

It's a basic human need: Shelter. 

A roof over your head; a floor under your feet. A place to be safe from the elements.

But it also needs to be liveable. And accessible. And those words mean something very different for a healthy, fully able-bodied person than they do for someone who must live with multiple disabling conditions all day, every day.

Most Kossacks already know BFSkinner. No, not that B.F. Skinner; our BFSkinner. 

He's been a member of Daily Kos for about six years now. He's a member of a great many groups and subcommunities there: part of various groups organized by and for Jewish Kossacks, an active member of the LGBTQI community, a participant in various arts-related groups, just to name a few. He's famous for his regular series of community-building diaries, in which he invites Kossacks to explain an aspect of their identities; name a favorite song or movie in a particular sub genre; or otherwise offer up a bit of themselves for inclusion in this wild and wonderful community that the other side loves to deride as the Great Orange Satan.

He's also brilliant: a Ph.D., and, like his namesake, a psychologist.

He's also battling a complex cluster of disabling conditions on a daily basis.

The last several years have seen major upheaval; he's had to move several times to accommodate his medical conditions. His most recent move was to an apartment with a roommate, in what seemed like an ideal situation for them; instead, it's turned into a nightmare that is causing grave risk to his health and his very life.

He has an opportunity now to move into an actual house — not merely shelter, but a home. It's a very good deal; it will work out well for him and for his landlords, who are old family friends. But making the move will require more money [first month's rent for the house, one month's rent as penalty for leaving the old apartment before the expiration of the lease, and assorted utility deposits and hook-ups] than he can scrape together on his disability income. And he has only this month — March — to make it happen, or this chance will be gone.

That's where we come in.