Team Wesberry Emergency Fund
EMERGENCY UPDATE! We are having to move back to Texas because no doctors here can see me for months-out and I’ve run out of many of my medications which keep me from having the brain hemorrhages. The relative who lured us up here promising help, love, and caring is now terrorizing my family and has tried to kill my autistic little girl by letting her out of the barrier we built to keep her safe from the water. We are having to pack what we can carry into our two cars and leave with our daughter. We had to ship our son out of state to finish school with a family friend to get away from this person’s influence. We are extremely scared for the safety of the child we have left. I’ve raised the goal significantly to help us get back to Texas and into see my doctors in Dallas who will actually see and treat me. If anyone can help us, please do. Thank you all.
Original Story Below:
About three weeks ago I had my fourth or fifth stroke; I forget which. This time it was in my frontal lobe and has made me permanently disabled. I will not be able to work for the rest of my life.
Many of you helped my family months ago during my first series of strokes (brain hemorrhages, aneurysms). The family you helped then is in dire need of any assistance possible.
My team of doctors in Texas; from the I.C.U. doctors to the neurosurgeon to the M.D. who all treated my high systolic blood pressure which sustains (not spikes) at +300 without medication, the anxiety and panic attacks causing the high blood pressure, the brain hemorrhages caused by the high blood systolic blood pressure, the high pressure of my spinal fluid (pseudo-tumor cerebra), and the nerve in my spine scraping against one of my vertebrae – recommended no surgeries due to the deadly side-effects. The only path for me is to manage this all with medications for the rest of my life… which may not last another year given the strokes.
There are no cures for these conditions and diseases aside from the pinched spinal nerve. Which again, the surgery to repair it is not recommended by the neurosurgeon because of the dangerous repercussions. That, and I would refuse the surgery on my spine anyway due to a previously botched spinal surgery I had 11-years ago in an attempt to cure the pseudo-tumor in my brain and spinal chord. That surgery left my lower back permanently damaged to the point I can only stand for a few minutes and that’s with my medication. If not for the medication I would not be able to stand or sit at all. That really doesn’t matter much though when I wind-up having a fifth stroke and finally die because of the blood pressure.
The various doctors’ final recommendation was to relieve the never-ending anxiety attacks which drives my blood pressure. My systolic blood pressure even rises while I’m sleeping and unconscious, unless I take the battery of pills I’m shoveling down my throat three times a day. To permanently lower my blood pressure I was ordered to leave my profession forever (working in Houston then in Dallas) and move as far out of the large cities as I could. Basically I require a lifestyle with a much slower pace out in rural America. I decided to follow their advice and moved my family out into the rural Midwest.
We used all of my pension along with help from one of my sisters to make the move closer to her, and pay the down-payment and first month’s rent on our new farmhouse along with the down-payment for our electricity which is spread over our first three months of billing. There’s also the gas for my wife to get back and forth to work; at a minimum wage job that only pays her about $750 a month. She’s been a stay-at-home mom for the past decade. My son is 16 now and has a job waiting for him at the same wage but we’re waiting on certain papers from Austin, TX so he can prove identification.
I’ve filed for SSA Disability along with SSI for both myself and my daughter. We’ve also applied for Temporary Cash Assistance here in Missouri along with food stamps. The food stamps have just now started coming in; which will help but it won’t free-up enough money to pay our rent, electricity, etc. The actual cash benefits, if we’re approved by the Social Security Administration, won’t start for another five months… and that’s if I’m not turned down the first time around.
My sister who was helping us went (how do I say this?) completely insane-asylum crazy about a week ago. After which I discovered she’s extremely bi-polar and has had so many shock therapy treatments that her brain is fried. Other people who know her better than I let me know that she can pull-off being normal for a couple of months at a time, but will then have another “episode”. I was unaware of all of this until after she convinced us that moving up here to rural Missouri was my only shot at stopping the anxiety and thereby stopping the high blood pressure and strokes; which is exactly what the doctors told me to do. She has stopped helping us completely, including with this months rent that has still not been paid. Electricity will get shut off on the 22nd of this month. She gave me her word she would pay the rent, and I stupidly believed her. So my sister is out of the picture now because I cannot have that kind of insanity around my wife, son, me, and our disabled daughter. She is the last of our family still alive who had the means to help us.
Due to my incurable illnesses and the multiple strokes we’ve gone from making $4000/month net to $750/month net while haven been essentially tricked by a person we trusted very much into believing the cost of living up here was a great deal less than our home in Texas. It is a fact the rent is much cheaper here, but everything else including the exact same products are much more expensive than those in Texas. The cheaper rent doesn’t come close to making up for it.
We desperately need your help. From friends and strangers alike. I’ve set our goal to $4000 which we can stretch out with my wife’s job to pay for my treatment and survive until the SSA makes their decision in a few months. We need this assistance via GoFundMe as soon as possible so I can start paying rent and electricity, along with finding a doctor near me to take over my treatment and manage my various prescriptions. If my prescriptions run out I will die within 24 hours, and I only have enough left for a couple more weeks.
In addition, and the spirit of be completely honest with all of you, I do intend to use about $300 of the money raised to go see my Mom who is dying of the same disease I have. She is 60-years old and nearly completely disabled. She cannot travel the distance to see me before she dies, but I can if we have enough gas money. We have not seen each other in 24 years and it’s killing my soul for fear I’m likely not going to see her again before one of us passes away.
As always, we appreciate greatly all donations large and small alike. $10 from one person who can barely afford it is just as important to my wife and I as $500 from someone who can. Anything and everything helps, especially passing along our link to the campaign.
Thank you all.