Help with Karen's last & final wish

Please read below for the original GoFundMe posted by Karen, our mother.

At this point, unfortunately our mother is too sick to do anything and is currently in the hospital intubated (a tube is down her throat breathing for her) and heavily sedated. Because of this, we her daughters, will be continuing this GoFundMe. It does not look as if she will ever return from the hospital.

The goals for the money donated have changed since this GoFundMe was created. We would like to use the money donated for past due pills that need to be paid, her final wish of cremation, and her wake. A small, but expensive, list.

Please donate anything you can, even a five or ten-dollar donation helps. Please help us further by passing this on and encouraging others to do so as well. The further this gets, the more it will be able to help with end of life expenses.

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I'm Karen Nordgren, and I have a very rare primary immunodeficiency disorder (genetic) that causes constant ghastly respiratory infections. In addition to this, I have a bunch of other deadly diseases caused by my PID, too, yay!

The one that is killing me most quickly though is my end-stage COPD. No, I've never smoked, not even one cigarette in my whole life. Some girls are just lucky. Obviously with my brains and charisma, I had to take a hit somewhere, right? One Dr. told me that if we can get my lungs under control, I might have 1-2 more years. Another Dr. called hospice for me (nice!) and said I have less than 6 months. I don't know about you, but I think that 1-2 years sounds much more pleasant.


Problem though; my lungs will not be controlled. They are so out of control they decided I should have not one, but two pulmonary embolisms and double pneumonia all at once last month (so generous are they). Guess the lungs showed my brain exactly what they thought. Even my organs are opinionated. It's really hard to function when your body is the enemy of your brain. In order to breathe, I currently take an extremely high dosage of steroids. And those darn steroids, even though they give me life, have ruined my body to the point that I now have diabetes, liver failure and congestive heart failure. Oh yeah, they also turned my strawberry blond hair a different color after 55 years, and made me gain like 100 pounds.  Now I don't just have chipmunk cheeks and a moon face from steroids, I actually look like I ate two whole chipmunks, one for each cheek. Not cool, man, not cool. Thanks, steroids! I made the best of the hair thing though at least, and as you can see from some pictures, I am now sporting (and rocking it, I must say) black and purple hair!  It's so fun, I don't know why I didn't do it years ago. I'm getting a tattoo, too.  A watercolor zombie bite over the port-a-cath in my chest. Brilliant! Why not, right? If there ever was a time, this is surely it.


This year, I have been in the hospital more than I've been at home. It's not fun. I'm home right now, and hoping to stay here for a bit.  One day at a time. Not to be Disney crazy, but one of my current mottos is "just keep swimming, just keep swimming."  It's a good one, don't you think?


Short story version is that I wasn't diagnosed as PID until I was in my early 40s, but by then, I had gone through years and years of constant bronchitis and pneumonia, among other weird diseases that popped up along the way. Like the bacterial meningitis that almost killed me. I had a nasopalatein tumor - even my Dr. hadn't heard of that one.  It gave me a gap in my front teeth. Thanks, tumor, I didn't need that! It was very hard for me to have both daughters because both were full on placenta previa pregnancies. My first daughter was in extreme distress and had to be rushed immediately to CHOC for intensive care treatment because I completely hemorrhaged instead of going into labor and the hospital was an hour away. She wasn't breathing and it's a miracle she lived. Crazy stuff! With the second daughter, I still lived an hour away, but fortunately my water broke and she wasn't so premature, we had a bit more time and she was born with better health. Each time one of these weird things occurred, I asked the Dr., why?  Why is this happening to me??  "Oh, I don't know. It's just random, like being hit by lightning." Fortunately, that one hasn't happened (yet).  But I've used so many of a cat's nine lives that I've moved on to my second cat.  


So, way before I was ever diagnosed, my lungs were wrecked, and they have gone downhill quickly. Way more quickly than I want (or anyone that knows me wants). The reason I've decided to use GoFundMe is not because I'm not needy, or greedy, or that I feel like a victim of life's circumstances. I just really need some help attaining my last wish. I'm actually embarrassed to be  doing this, but so many friends have encouraged me to try gofundme to help. And it is helping. People I have never met have donated money to my cause. That's beautiful. It restores my faith in humanity, and I think that we all could use that now,  with the current state of politics, terrorism, and ongoing wars.  Some art. Some beauty - things that sparkle admist all the misery.


I currently live in Southern California with my younger of two daughters and her beautiful family - fiancee Jorge, and my grandson, Liam age three, and granddaughter, Adelina age twenty months. Talk about the lights of my life!  I have been very fortunate in my disability (always look on the bright side of life!) to have been able to spend a lot of time with Alyssa as an adult. We have done lots of crazy fun  things - vacations, spontaneous road trips, shows and concerts that we will both remember and cherish for the remainder of our lives.


Although my gofundme was originally written and started so I could move to Northern California to do all the great things I've gotten to do with Alyssa and now do them with Amy, my plan has gone vastly awry.

I have gotten too sick to move up north, or anywhere else now.  Who am I kidding? I have trouble making it from the house to the driveway.  I know now, that you all knew I'd never make it moving up north, but just didn't want to squash my little dream :-( There is just no way it's going to happen, and I understand that now. At this point, I'm just hoping to drive up and see Amy in the fall.   Check that, I'm just to sick to hardly even get out of bed, who am I joking.  I waited about a week to tell Amy I couldn't come. It crushes both she and I. Amy and I were going to dine out at her favorite restaurants, we were going to go to a concert, see some movies, the Walt Disney Museum, a huge swap meet, and maybe even a spa and massage. I wanted so much to go to the City Lights book store, where I went and fell in love as a teenager. I'm kinda hippie-ish, so I just love the Haight/Ashbury area. No can do. I'm just too sick. I hated telling Amy today. I know she and Maimone are very disappointed :-( I am, I was hoping to furnish my house from the swap meet. Boo hoo :-(

In addition to the COPD that is killing me, I was also just diagnosed wtih neuropathy, which caused my legs to move to Hawaii to join my lungs in their insidious plan to leave me behind. Sucks :-(

My dying wish (gosh, that sounds so morbid!) is to move up to Northern California with my older daughter, Amy. And move as soon as humanly possible.

 Amy moved to the San Francisco area right after high school to go to a terrific college. She loves the area and met and married her amazing husband, Maimone, there. They both have fantastic jobs and are hoping to start a family soon. I am so very proud of my daughters; they are truly the best thing I ever accomplished. Smart, kind, beautiful? Check. They are absolutely the mostest.



I have always loved the Bay Area, and before we knew how sick I was, I had planned to retire there.  Well, now there is a bit of urgency, especially if Dr. 6-months is correct. I want to be able to spend my last months with Amy, doing the type of things I have been so blessed to be able to do with Alyssa. I want to move there as soon as possible, and that's why I'm trying to raise money. I have been on permanent disability for ten years due to my PID and other diseases, so I probably don't need to say that I don't make much.

 I'm really hoping for the assistance of my friends, family, and strangers that want to help with my cause  ("I've always depended on the kindness of stranglers." Stop, Karen, no more movie quotes!) The more that join in, donate and pass my story around, the merrier, I always say!  Party on Wayne! Party on, Garth!


I hope I can touch a lot of you with what I'm going through. Again, I hate, "oh, poor you's" and pity more than anything in the world.  I could wax on about the life sacrifices I've made to take care of my daughters, and my mentally ill mom her whole life, but that's not my style. The multiple jobs and lazy, non-child-support-paying ex-husband. Everyone has problems. Everyone is recovering from a slight case of birth.

Although my main love is my family, I used to be a gardening fanatic and designer. The kids and their friends called me the Crazy Plant Lady. I still do design work, when I'm able, and I'm hoping to get a very small house near Amy in San Leandro, CA that I can design the heck out of.  Just don't ask me to implement. I'm a horrible implementer. I was a musical prodigy as a child, and have had way more awesome life experiences than any one person should be entitled to. I love reading and movies. Actually, I'm a pretty big geek about both those things, which is probably good since my current job within the family unit is stay in bed and "don't die". Sad and funny all at the same time, and turns out, I'm not even very good at this.  I have a very morbid sense of humor; in case you didn't guess. I'm a zombie and horror movie geek. It really serves me well right now. I feel like my leg is caught in a bear trap and the zombie hoard is moving in quickly, well, George Romero style quickly. There are lots of zombies though. Hundreds of thousands, it seems.

I'm a punk rock grandma and I don't behave the way most 55-year-old women do. What can I say. I'm too young in my brain to die quite yet. Tragically, my brain is now being left out of the loop ever since my lungs have taken control. Good news though! I finally got my awesome tattoos! I'll send a picture update soon :) They make me stupidly happy!


I'm a vital and energetic person, at least I used to be. I still am in my brain. I worked very hard until my disability, often two or three jobs at a time to support my children. Yes, really. One time, I was an office manager at a candy factory then after work, I walked across the street to their restaurant and managed, waitressed and closed up there. After that, I went on to clean office buildings. I was tired a lot. At the end of my working career, I had a great job that I hoped to happily retire from. It just wasn't in the cards for me, I guess. Fortunately, I have many people that I call close friends. From past jobs, current and former neighbors and a fantastic extended family - Thanks, Contreri! I have friends in many different U.S. states and even other countries. I am wicked smart, have a great personality and everybody loves me, hahaha. I really am a lucky girl, and I have a stupidly positive outlook on both life and death.   

My friends and family would surely attest to the fact that if you have ever met anyone who sucked the very marrow out of life, and had as many unique experiences as they could possibly cram in, that person is me. The candle that burns brightest, burns fastest, right? I have no regrets and am not afraid to die, but there are still a lot of things I want to do. I'm supposed to be writing a book about my crazy life. (Please comment if you might be interested in reading it.) I wish I could have time to do so many more things. Surely my brain will be busy till I take my last breath. My little plans and schemes, it's what keeps me going, I think.


I will post regular updates as to the current state of my health and what's going on in my brain.  Hopefully, the updates I've already posted have given you both laughter and food for thought.

So, my final plea: Help me fix my current house and yard, so I can spend time in the outdoors that I so sorely miss, and fly Northern California living Amy down at least once per month to be with her Southern California living mom. 

Help the Zombie Queen find her herd, help the Crazy Plant Lady draw her last breath of chlorophyll, help me live out my last months in a nicely fixed up house and yard with my family and friends surrounding me. Please, just help me have fun until the end. Thank you so much for your support. It means the world to myself and my family. 

If you have any questions about my campaign or diseases, please do not hesitate to ask. You have probably already guessed that I'm an open book. So very many people have touched my heart and soul during this life, I hope I have touched yours, too.  

   

     !!!!!PLEASE HELP TO SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!



Love and peace, karen