Help Honor Carolyn Saulson

On January 14th 2019 heaven gained an angel Carolyn Saulson was a seventy year old African American Women, She is the mother of Sumiko and Scott Saulson, Grandmother of Franchesca Eleanor Saulson, Elisabetta Maria Saulson, and Joshua Andrakin. She left us conforted my her granddaughters by her side. She is a  nine year multiple myeloma survivor. She is also an author of "living a lie", a poet, grant writer, event organizer, and community leader in both the African American and the Disability Rights advocacy communities. One of the founding members of Iconoclast Productions (established 1993) she founded the African American Multimedia Conference in 1996, the Iconoclast Black Film Festival / San Francisco Black Independent Film Festival in 1997, and wrote grants and lobbied for the San Francisco Juneteenth, California Blues Festival, and various other programs out of the African American Art and Culture Complex, where she volunteered starting in 1988. She is a lead singer of the band Stagefright, and public access producer of the television show Stagefright since 1993. Her political activism started in her teens and twenties with marches to advance the African American community and make Martin Luther King’s Day a legal holiday. She worked with the Citizens Commission on Human Rights to expose abuses against psychiatric patients in the seventies and was on a radio program in Los Angeles reporting and documenting them. Because her father, Leon Mathews, came back from the Korean War with symptoms of “shell shock” and was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, and because her brother James, who was mentally retarded, was refused dialysis because they were told he was a burden on society back when she was still a teenager, Carolyn has always had strong feelings of advocacy for the disabled, in general, and intersectional issues facing African Americans with disabilities as well. Carolyn Saulson was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, on August 10, 2009 after her kidneys failed and she was admitted to Sutter Solano emergency. Shortly thereafter, she met her oncologist, Dr. Chainarong Limvarapus, who started her regimen of chemotherapy and got her kidneys working again. She’s been on chemotherapy ever since. August 10, 2018 was Carolyn’s ninth year as a cancer survivor – a testament to the skills of her physicians, a miracle and a blessing, as the cancer has only a 45% chance of survival past five years and Carolyn’s was already advanced 9 years ago, she has beaten the odds time and time again. She beat the odds by surviving nine years. She beat the odds when, three months after she was diagnosed with cancer, she was diagnosed with Guillan-Barre Syndrome, an auto-immune disorder that attacks the peripheral nerves. She was paralyzed and could only shake her head and nod and move one hand when she first became sick with Guillan-Barre around New Years Day 2010. Over the next year, she worked on recovering from it and experienced about a 90% recovery from Guillan-Barre over a two year period. Although she never regained the ability to drive a car and would experience neuropathy in her legs below the knees and her hands permanently (for the rest of her life) she regained the ability to walk with assistance. March 21, 2017 Carolyn beat the odds again, when her family was told she might die of heart disease. She was admitted to the hospital in March 2017. She had pneumonia and a heart condition called A-fib, she had to be intubated, and they decided to remove the tube on March 21. Once again, she survived. In early August 2018, the longtime cancer survivor, who was in the process of fighting back against yet another group of set-backs, was hit with a devastating blow – a fibroid tumor in the bones of her skull was placing pressure on her brain which caused her to have a siezure. The multiple-myeloma had finally advanced to the end stages and desperate measures were taken – radiation applied to reduce the mass so that she could have some remaining life quality. The tumor was over her speech center, and has affected her ability to communicate, but after radiation she regained some ability to speak again, became responsive, and returned home first on palliative then hospice care. Then, in the middle of the night on the night of Friday, September 14, 2018, Carolyn had a heart attack and was revived but remained on an intubator as she couldn't breathe enough to sustain life. We are now raising money to pay for Carolyn's final expenses as well as a well deserved home going and burial. The Saulson family wants to thank you, Anything and everything helps.