Save Kayla's Fingers

                                    Kayla Miller

For eight years mom has lived with the autoimmune diseases lupus, fybromyalgia, and connective tissue disease.
She has suffered with many painful symptoms for years, always with a smile on her face.

Over the past year something bizarre has started to happen.
Her fingers have begun to die one at a time.
First her finger will go painfully numb, about a week after the numbness starts it will turn purple/blue, finally it will begin to wither and will be extremely painful as the skin and nerves die.
The only solution is to surgically remove the fingers.


                 After loosing both of her index fingers. 


Her first finger was lost in October of 2013 (right index).
Her second finger was lost in April of 2014 (left index).
Her third finger was lost last week in August 2014 (right middle).

While in the hospital with her latest finger, her left pinky and ring fingers have started the process of dying. When mom told her doctor this, he nearly began to cry. At this point her left hand is in as much pain as her right hand that just had surgery, which makes it difficult to do even simple tasks.

Raynaud's disease (an autoimmune disease that goes hand in hand with lupus) causes fingers to turn white and go numb for a short time. Mom has an extreme version of this illness. The normal triggers (cold weather) do not affect her, and even though she is on higher amounts of medication, nothing has helped. Her extreme version is being called Resistant Raynaud's.


       This is her right hand after her latest surgery. 


Since September Mom has been in the hospital many, many times including an entire month throughout March and April and a week in the ICU this month. She is currently still in the hospital, hopefully to be released in the next few days, although more visits are planned in the coming weeks and months.

Her doctors are making her appointments in Shreveport and New Orleans to see if anyone else can find a treatment that will work before the latest fingers are lost.

The problem is that travel back and forth from either city will be costly. Aside from medical costs we are suddenly having to find money to pay for gas, food, and hotels that we have not had any time to save and budget for.
On top of this, both of our cars are 20 years old and cannot handle the amount of travel we will be making in the coming months. We will have to rent a car for each trip.

More than anything else, we ask that you will pray for her and that the doctors will find a solution to this bizarre illness.
Many of you have expressed interest in donating money to help out, and have asked me to set up a GoFundMe. If you feel inclined to help out we would appreciate any donation no matter how small.

Thank you all for your help through this journey.
-Dakota Miller