Aid for Marcie's Family After Tragic Stroke

Hello, my name is Rachel Lewis. I come to you with a heavy and humble heart, writing this on behalf of my fiancé and her sister about their dear mother, my sweet mother-in-law, the best grandmother to our son, and the most amazing sister, aunt, and friend to so many others. Her name is Marissa, known to her friends as Marcie and GiGi to her grandson.

Last week, Marcie suffered a very rare type of stroke called a pontine hemorrhagic stroke. The pons links your brain to your brain stem and serves as a bridge for messages to and from your brain to your nervous system, along with helping regulate things like breathing, heart rate, and some other functions. Because of the importance of this part of your brain, these strokes are almost always catastrophic as they leave very little to be rehabilitated. Marcie’s case, unfortunately, proved to be no different as her family was recently forced to make the impossible decision to implement palliative care over keeping her alive with machines and no quality of life.

As hard as this time is for all of us, we are also stressed and overwhelmed with the soon coming necessary expenses of end-of-life care as well as other extenuating circumstances. Since this was such a sudden event, along with the fact she spent most of her life on disability due to her autism, Marcie had not yet prepared for her end-of-life, had no will or life insurance, which we are struggling to scrape together the finances for. As well as this concern, her youngest daughter had been living with her at Marcie’s former-boyfriend/now roommate’s house; it’s likely this arrangement will no longer work since she has left us.

If you can find it in your heart to give anything towards helping our family, it would mean everything. Marcie was the kindest, sweetest, and most generous woman anyone would ever have the pleasure of meeting. She didn’t deserve to go this way, but if anyone deserves your help, it’s her—even though she would never take it if she knew, that’s just who she was. Thank you for reading, please give what you can, even if it’s just a prayer.