Betty Johnson - New Lungs New Life

As many of you know my mom is not one to ask for help. She is typically the one volunteering her time to raise money for nonprofits, helping kids with learning differences, supporting her family and many more things than I can list. She has never been one to sit on the sidelines and wait for something to happen. She has always been a huge support for her kids either being horse show mom, Soccer mom, or becoming a black belt in Tae Kwon Do (at age 50) along side my brother. She is an advocate for all kids with learning differences which is a passion that she found while learning to support her own two childrenwith learning differences. She has helped countless children reach their goals thru her tutoring and she believes every child should succeed. She has worked for years helping raise money for nonprofit schools that cater to children with dyslexia. If you know my mom, then you already know all this about her. Over the past Three years daily life has become harder for her due to her diagnosis with IPF (Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis). IPF is incurable and when diagnosed you are given 3-5 years to live. Pause for a moment….Now take a deep breath, my mom can no longer do that. For her to continue living her best life she needs a double lung transplant and with a transplant comes a long recovery and a heavy cost.

 

In late 2016, My mom was diagnosed with IPF. When she broke the news to us, we were worried and unsure what the future was going to be. My mom agreed to try a new medication that would hopefully stop or slow the progression of the disease. Unfortunately, there were severe side effects like upset stomach and extreme sun sensitivity. She endured this medication for almost 2 years, but it didn’t really do much for stopping or slowing the progression of the disease. My parents decided that pursuing a lung transplant was the only option at this point. One of the criteria for getting a transplant is you must move and be close to the hospital. This means that both of my parents will be moving next week to Durham, NC for at least 6 months to a year to be close to Duke University Hospital Transplant Center. They need to raise some money to cover the things that my mom’s Medicare insurance and their savings won’t cover. Some of the uncovered costs are living expenses while in Durham and drug costs that may not be covered by insurance, she will be taking some of these drugs for the rest of her life in conjunction with her transplant. She wants to make sure her family is ok and thejourney is not worth taking if puts her family at risk.

The people at Duke strongly suggest she start a go fund me page and they told her how generous people are. They say we need to raise 50,000.00.  It is humbling to have to ask, but for my momand family I am asking for your help. Any amount will help reach our goal. Please share this so it can reach as many people as possible and Please keep my mom and family in your thoughts and prayers as we face the coming challenges. Take a deep breath and give thanks that you can do that. My prayer is that my mom will soon be able to breathe deeply, easily and gratefully with a little help from us all. Thank you!