Audra

                                           Friend in need:
  Have you ever crossed paths with a person & had an immediate wave of “oh there’s that soul I loved from a prior life”  I have a best friend who touched my life this way.  Audra Carpenter & I met through work, we didn’t work together long as she left to have gall bladder surgery & just never returned back to work. Her health snowballed from one complication to another.  Our friendship grew outside of the office over the following 2 years while being by her side either in the hospital or at home, holding her hand & trying to find words of comfort while listening to her explain to me that Dr’s told her she was not medically fixable & that death was ahead.  They can put a man on the moon & are in process of inventing a way to recharge your cell phone thru body heat, YET they can’t figure out how to fix what seems like simple illnesses?Audra has  Gastroparesis, (her stomach lost the ability to digest & move food through her digestive system) I & a handful of her friends have watched her deteriorate from a healthy 3 digit to a mere 2 digit skin holding bones weight, her body has developed a permeant spine curvature while maintaining the fetal position in hopes of easing the agonizing pain in the stomach & intestines, Audra has not stood 5’7 in over a year.  In the past 2 years she has had countless surgeries & is now on her 15th (? I lost count)  feeding tube. Without a gall bladder her body produces a constant stream of acid based bile which backs up into her stomach & eats away at the plastic feeding tube.  After about the 10th tube surgery I had “the talk” with my friend, she knows what’s ahead but like the rest of us doesn’t understand when the Dr’s say  there’s nothing they can do.  Some days she would welcome death just to have some relief from the pain, there is no quality of life left,  but there is still life.
Why the need for this posting?  Audra now has the possibility of becoming homeless in a matter of months.  She has been on Social Security disability income for the past 18months, her insurance company cancelled her policy as she has become eligible for Medicare, however with all the additional supplemental coverage tacked on so her medicines & Dr’s visits will be covered will not leave her with enough to cover her rent & utilities.  She has met with a HUD representative to see if she qualifies for low income housing , they will not even accept her application yet as there are way too many others in the waiting line. Audra is a single white childless female, this does not give her a good ticket when her application does get processed.  A couple of us have offered our home to her, but it’s medically too high risk for Audra to live among the healthy. Between the C-diff, Mercer & other infections that require isolation, gowns & masks while in hospital, Audra will not put her loved ones at risk.  Her friends can only help with a fraction of her financial shortage which is why I am grasping at straws here & trying this FB fund, we only need enough to help her thru the transitional period till she can find HUD housing. Even if you are not able to offer financial help,  can you please share this link with others. Maybe others out there might have suggestions or know of other organizations/charities that we haven’t researched already.  So please leave comments or private message me.  If you have made it through reading this all the way here I want to thank you.  I hope that you have been blessed with having an Audra in your life.