This is a fundraiser to help with expenses for my mother Karen. Mom is fighting for her life. She has been diagnosed with stage 3 lung cancer and is currently in a skilled nursing facility. Her disease has progressed to where she uses an oxygen tank to breathe and needs help with daily activities and meals. Her wish is to undergo treatment at home; but before that can happen, we need to make her small south Florida home safe, operable and clean. Funds raised will be put towards removing excess clutter and junk, repairing or replacing home appliances, pest control, sanitizing everything, and medical expenses. Thank you for reading her story.

Determined, vivacious, sweet and thoughtful come to mind when describing Mom. As a single mother of two small kids in Connecticut, she worked a full-time secretarial job, and no matter how exhausted she was each night, mom had dinner waiting on the kitchen table where our little family of three gathered to eat together. We didn't have much, but she ensured we had what was needed and sometimes, what was wanted (like the $125 dress I dreamed of wearing to prom). After the kids left the nest to head west, things didn’t get easier for mom. She was in a serious auto accident where her vehicle got t-boned causing whiplash and permanent damage to her cervical spine (C1-5). When she was just 35 years old she developed osteo- and psoriatic-arthritis throughout her entire body causing lifelong pain and suffering. Then later, after moving to Florida she actually broke a medical record when she became one of the first patients in her area to undergo a bilateral hip replacement (yes, she got both hips replaced at once!) And four years ago, she was struck with colon cancer that she was able to eradicate, a huge success story. But today, her lung cancer diagnosis forces her to resume the battle.

Mom never remarried and faces life’s challenges alone. My brother Marc and I visited and helped from afar, but over the years she became less able to do household upkeep, and things have built up or fallen apart around her. For the last 10 years Mom has been coming west to see her grandkids on holidays, so we hadn't visited recently and weren't aware of how much stuff she had been accumulating until now. Before she can come home safely and comfortably, we must make a bunch of improvements and repairs:

 • Decluttering & stuff removal. See video clips showing several years of mail, newspaper coupons and excess furniture layering walkways and surfaces

• Pest control. Roaches have been worsening in her end-unit, adjacent to the trash room.

 • HVAC. The central air-conditioning repair is fairly urgent as in Florida, you must repair AC in winter or you will be stuck paying more in summer

 • Plumbing repair. We have been helping her deal with fixing plumbing leaks & toilet clogs from afar. Now that I am in Florida we need to take a deeper dive and call the professionals

 • Painting. Clean and paint all the walls yellowed by tobacco over the years (no smoking!!! is the agreement for her to come home) and sanitizing every surface once the pests and mess have been cleared. This will include furniture removal /replacement

 • Assist with a ~$10k balance owed to the nursing facility. Once she returns to a clean and safe home, this monthly expense will drop off, another reason we are trying to get her home more quickly

Lastly, if we could afford to do some non-essentials, this would include replacing the 30-year old stove and dishwasher, both of which technically still work just not well, help with AirBnB for me during the initial stage of cleanup & fumigation process, and anything else we haven’t yet thought of. I’ll be sure to post updates. Thank you, friends, for your kindness and help. Your donations will go a long way towards getting Mom comfortably positioned back at home before she faces the hardest part of her journey to come. I love you all!! and hope to connect with many of you soon.. ((((((( gratitude ))))))