Help Alice Recover From Massive Stroke

Emily Gillaspy is organizing this fundraiser.

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This isn't a sensational story. There isn't hype, or some crazy injustice by police or a corporation. This is a normal and unfortunate story about a woman who lived a normal life, did normal things, and deserves to have that normalcy back.

This GoFundMe is to help my mom Alice, who is also a sister, a grandma, and a great grandma. She was an apartment manager for over 30 years and has been the matriarch of our family. She's always helped her family and friends as much as she could over the years, financially, physically, and emotionally. She's kind-hearted and has rescued countless animals, including dogs, cats, and birds. She also helped her many residents, and helped so many people get affordable housing.

She's got a great sense of humor, a sarcastic wit, and a sharp tongue when it's needed. She loves the San Francisco Giants, loves watching TV shows about houses and cooking, and silly competitive shows -- shows like Chopped, Flip This House, and also Shark Tank. She's a big fan of Oak Island, of American Pickers, of Supernatural, and also The Walking Dead. She's an artist who doesn't give herself enough credit for her talent. She's a lover of oldies and classic Motown music, of old-school jazz, of ballads from the 1950's. She's a long-time fan of the Beatles, Patsy Cline, Nat King Cole, Smokey Robinson, Billie Holiday, but also has a soft spot in her heart for REM's "It's the End of the World As We Know It," and Madness' "Our House."

She's the woman who has made me the person I am today.

On Friday July 27, my mom had a severe ischemic stroke in the left middle cerebral artery, which damaged 60% of her brain on that side. She has lost all function of the right side of her body, has really bad cognition and memory issues, has problems with speaking and swallowing, etc. She was in the hospital for several days, was moved to a skilled nursing facility we were immediately unhappy with, then was back at the hospital before we found a better skilled nursing facility where we felt they would take the best possible care of her.

This has been a really hard time for my family emotionally and physically. I live 2 1/2 - 3 hours away from where she is and am driving up to see her, staying overnight, visiting again in the morning, then coming back home, all to do it again within a day or two. Usually I pick up my aunt along the way, as she and my mom are very close. My sister Melissa is about 45 minutes away from her and is trying to see her as much as she can while still balancing work, two young boys, and everything else in her life. My brother Rich, who lives with my mom, is taking the brunt by trying to see her whenever Melissa or I can't, and trying to be there almost every day. We are trying to be there as much as we can for her, because we all love her and want her to get better. From what we have learned, good family and emotional support has a huge impact on stroke recovery.

Right now she's in a skilled nursing facility that is covered by Medi-Cal. She was getting physical, speech, and occupational therapy, but has 'plateaued,' so insurance no longer covers it. Every little bit of therapy helps, but also tires her out. She's having to re-learn how to do normal tasks she's done, such as learning to eat and drink without swallowing wrong and choking (or risking pneumonia), having to learn to use her left side to do basic tasks, and trying very hard to re-wire those broken brain connections and help her right side start to work a little again -- or learn to do everything without it.

My mom is retired for the past couple years, and most of her life savings went into the purchase of her house (her first house!) a few years ago. The rest went to dealing with cancer treatment & surgery earlier this year. She lives on a very limited social security amount, and has Medicare and now Medi-Cal. I am worried about being able to maintain her house payments and household expenses, as well as the unexpected costs that crop up. Once she moves from the care facility, she will need full-time care and will likely need to stay with me for awhile to work on recovering. She will need special equipment, such as a hospital bed, shower aid, shower wheelchair, bed lift, possibly a walker if she is able to walk again, therapy equipment, and more. She will also need to pay for various therapy for many months to come, as only some will be covered by insurance. We've read a lot about the benefits of acupuncture for stroke victims, as well as some other more holistic options, and would like to try those in addition to standard therapy once she's in a home setting. I know my mom wants to be home with her kitties and we want to give her every opportunity to recover enough for that.

We would like my mom's house to be there for her when she is strong enough and able to be home again. If she can home again, and she will need to have the front & possibly back steps of her home modified or have ramps installed, as she likely will not be able to walk again and there are 2 1/2 steps to get into her house. Otherwise there is a wheelchair lift that costs several thousand dollars. On top of house expenses, there have been multiple ambulance ride costs, and her 5-day hospital stay, which has a copay of around $200/day.

There is also the cost of trying to be there for her as much as we can. For me alone, I am filling my gas tank every 1 1/2 trips, which adds up fast at $50/tank. I was driving up daily and started going up one day and coming back the next just to alleviate a little of the financial and mental strain of the long drive (3 hours one way). We do not know what the cost of everything will end up being, so I am just trying to raise as much as we can to help make things easier for my mom and all of us.

If anybody can help in any way, we really appreciate it. If you could also share this post for others to see outside of our immediate circles, that would be greatly appreciated as well. Thank you so much in advance. I will continue to post updates as we have them.

Emily

This is my mom in the first hospital she stayed in, where they did the stroke shot to try to break up the clot in her brain, as well as a manual attempt at breaking the clot, and an MRI to assess the damage from the clot.

This is my mom and her sister Laura at the second hospital. This was before she could swallow and was still being tube fed.

This is Violet and me visiting Grandma in her skilled nursing facility.

This is another pic from the facility. The woman is a volunteer "care clown," with a dog companion. Since staff interact with patients and always wear gloves, this care clown doesn't wear gloves so she can give patients a "human touch" when she's visiting them. The facility she is in has other amazing volunteers, including some with animals, and musicians who do music therapy to help soothe the people there.