#AnnieFights

At 17 my mom was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease called Lupus. When she should have been out enjoying her early adult years she spent most of them in and out of hospitals trying to find reason to each new symptom she had. Because Lupus is so undeveloped in the medical world, she often got the response of "I don't know why," when a new symptom arose. My mom has been a patient at NIH for almost 20 years now. In the beginning she had to go multiple times a month for research. For the last 3 years she's been on dialysis. And for those of you who don't know how time consuming dialysis is- it's a treatment done 3 days a week for 5 hours at a time. Currently, my mom does a "night cycler" where every single night she hooks up onto a machine where she can do it for 9 hours while she sleeps. To be expected, Lupus has brought many other health issues into her life such as memory loss, edema which caused even more issues, and chemotherapy for years. Her kidney disease is now "end stage renal disease.” So I need your help.

Finally all ducks are in a row for my mom, she got put on the list for a transplant and approved, my uncle Donny has gone through a series of tests to get matched to be a donor, and she's received Medicare and now UVA financial assistance! So together my family and I are trying to raise the remaining $3,500 to cover surgery and post-surgery. I cannot wait for my mom to live the life she deserved to start living 21 years ago. Many thanks to all donations, you all are awesome!