Bring Nate home & beat Lyme disease!

Imagine …you live in a dry cabin in rural Alaska. You live alone. Every step, action, and movement you make is painful; even laying down is painful. Your only heat source is a wood stove and the physical task of making a fire is painful but necessary in sub zero temperatures. Routinely you take five- gallon buckets outside and fill them with snow. The snow provides you with water for cleaning and bathing when melted in front of the wood stove. Your body only allows you to go to town for supplies and mail once a month. This necessary trip leaves you bed ridden for several days.

This is the life of my friend Nate Atwood. We have been friends for 35 years, since we were 9 years old. He was on my first basketball team. I was the tag-along sister on the mostly boy team.   As teammates for three years we formed a friendship and bond which still stands today.

Nate and I grew up in Roseburg, Oregon. *He grew up playing on the banks of the South Umpqua River. He attended Fir Grove, Fullerton IV, John C. Fremont Jr. High, and Roseburg High School. He was a student athlete, lettering in football, basketball, and track. He graduated from OSU with a BS in Geography and a MS in Glacial Geomorphology (with honors I might add). After college, Nate lived, worked, and traveled as a GIS Engineer/Cartographer for the U.S. Military. He has beautiful six-year-old daughters who are the lights of his life and give him purpose
in life.

Around the age of ten, life stared changing for Nate. He began to feel tired all of the time…even falling asleep in class in fifth grade. He started experiencing injuries and various aches and pains that he and his parents attributed to sports. On into adulthood while living a vibrant life enjoying sports, travel, and outdoor adventures, his body was in constant pain. Even the day his daughters were born, he was a week out of emergency surgery for a herniated disc. As he sat gazing upon his daughters for the first time, one in each arm, he was fighting excruciating pain.  He didn’t know that his entire body was under attack… *That aforementioned play on the banks of the South Umpqua…is important to this story because it leads me to the purpose of this Go Fund Me page. As a 10- year-old he was bitten by a tick. That one damn little tick infected his body with
the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. After 30 years of chronic pain, fatigue, and a failing body, he was diagnosed with chronic Lyme disease. The following is just a highlight reel of his many health issues:

Seizures
Disabling migraines
Herniated disks, and unstable spine
Full body arthritis
Loss of all of his teeth
Hip dysplasia
Failing knees
Chronic fatigue
Chronic pain

Nate hasn’t been able to work for some time due to the progressive deterioration of his body. Insurance companies do not recognize or provide treatment for Lyme disease; as a result, his financial reserves have been depleted. He must daily make choices like, “do I buy a prescription or firewood to keep warm.” His “Hail Mary” if you will, is going to be a chance at an inpatient treatment program which can
cost upwards of $25,000. He also needs help coming home to be closer to family, friends, and a support system. Funds raised will go for treatment, his well-being, and his ultimate goal,

“I need to be here longer. I still have so much to tell my daughters.”
-Nate Atwood

Help bring Nate home. Help him to get the treatment and care he needs and deserves. Help him to be able to be a presence in his daughters’ lives.

Thank you,
Kelley Kershner-Culp