Cassie Moi's Fight Against Lyme
Donation protected
My name is Chase Torbergson, owner and founder of Today's Counseling, LLC. This is a medical fund for Cassie Moi assembled by our team and many others. We've chosen to back Cassie in her fight against Lyme Disease, Neurological Lyme, and Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome because we believe in her story.
In a nutshell, Cassie has been diagnosed with Late Stage Chronic Lyme and Neurological Lyme Disease and POTS. After battling with Lyme symptoms almost her entire life she was eventually forced to quit working, at which point her family stepped in to help cover the costs of treatment which has been ongoing for almost two years. Foremost in these efforts was her life saving grandmother, dipping into retirement savings to help Cassie get back on track.
While great strides have been made in Cassie's recovery journey, she is still very ill and disabled, and just as importantly is still unable to return to her passions. This fund was established because Cassie's family has run out of funds, savings and retirement accounts emptied. With nowhere else to turn to they reach out to the community.
If you've found your way to this page you may already be familiar with the sinister symptoms and misdiagnosis' common to Lyme, the invisible illness, and if not, please continue reading. Below is Cassie's story, her life, her illness, and where the road goes from here. This page is not only intended to assist Cassie and her family in such needed assistance, but to help spread awareness and support for Lyme and those suffering around the globe.
Thank you for finding us, and thank you for staying with us.
Chase M. Torbergson, LMHCA on behalf of Cassie Moi
Cassie and "Mama Moi"
Cassie was born in Thousand Oaks, CA where she was raised by her single mother. They moved frequently as her mother made every possible effort to enroll Cassie in the best elementary schools, but this made it difficult for Cassie to establish lasting relationships with other children. It was around this time time when she was diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. Around the age of six she experienced a significant trauma. This is not the focus for this campaign, but a life-time journey that Cassie may choose to share in another medium to help spread awareness and healing.
Eventually returning to Thousand Oaks Cassie began attending Westlake High School. It was during this time that she began to experience the first significant stages of her declining health, signs and symptoms that would stick with her for her entire life. She began to experience gall bladder attacks, repetitive kidney infections and stones, body aches and joint pain, shooting pains in her organs, migraines, sore throats, panic attacks, insomnia, brain fog, nausea, bloody noses resulting in trips to the ER, and severe asthma. The extreme fatigue that began to settle over her resulted in long periods of missed school, up to three weeks at a time.
Rumors over her absence began to circle within the student population, and unable to adequately explain the rapid decline of her physical health, Cassie began to suffer from depression and anxiety. Due to the invisible nature of Lyme symptoms her family was unreceptive, and unable to see how much she was suffering on the inside. Because of her "deficiencies" and with a lack of support or understanding Cassie began to reach out to her doctors. This period of poor health, endless pain and isolation from the world took an even heavier hit on her mental health, and Cassie began to feel suicidal. She describes this period in "cycles of hidden depression," a very common Lyme symptom. Local doctors dismissed her symptoms as "all in her head" and began to "throw pills at her", birth control, Ibuprofen, loads of antibiotics, and an antidepressant which drastically increased her suicidal ideation and caused more harm to her body.
But never one to give up without a fight, Cassie continued to live for the moment, making the most out of brief periods of energy and hope. She dove into the world of outdoor activities, taking up snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking, anything to get up and push herself. She made close friends who were supportive and understanding, surrounding herself with love and activity. Due to the support from her friends, a select few teachers, and a very understanding dean of attendance, Cassie graduated.
Cassie with her Grammy and their matching sweatshirts!
She began to attend Santa Monica College, working two jobs and ever increasing health care costs. It was here that arts professors l noticed and believed in her natural abilities. Cassie focused more than ever on powering through bouts of depression, chronic pain, and fatigue. She began to take charge of her health, learning preventative measures and ultimately attaining straight A's and the honor roll. She was asked to join a prestigious mentor program and by the age of 19 her work was on display in LA, Hollywood, and Santa Monica art galleries. After college she began to assist the amazing painter, Deedee Cheriel, and learned first hand what it meant to be a working artist.
In 2015 she moved to Seattle, WA in search of a better climate (severe heat intolerance from POTS is common) and new artistic opportunities. In 2016 she was accepted at the University of Washington for their Visual Arts and DXarts programs. These were challenging programs catered to Ph.D. students. It was here Cassie began to work large scale on interactive installations. She began to explore themes of anxiety in her work, "inducing the feeling to spread awareness". She describes the "hidden anxieties behind an artists confidence" through her audio visual works. She explains that art provided an aspect of life where anxiety was okay, even needed and compelled to be expressed to spread awareness.
Cassie's installations were shown at the DX Arts Fab Lab, Brain Freeze gallery, and on exhibit in Ni Modo's popup gallery at MoPop and she began to teach mechantronic art workshops for kids. In a repetition of history another professor took to Cassie's innate abilities, and she was invited to join a premier mentorship. But this period of achievement and excellence was to be short lived, and during the horrible wildfires of 2017 severe smoke inhalation crashed Cassie's health. She became bed ridden for weeks at a time, and many symptoms of the past resurfaced in what would become a normal cycle of health and recession.
Along with the familiar chronic pain, joint inflammation, migraines, and fatigue, Cassie developed a host of new difficulties including impaired balance and eye hand coordination, body paralysis, light, sound, and scent sensitivity, tremors, tinnitus, visual hallucinations, an inability to read screens, comprehension and communication issues and eventually seizures sometimes lasting hours at a time. Comprehension difficulties and memory impairment coupled with an extreme sensitivity to lights and electronics made it so Cassie was unable to continue working in DX arts. She was forced to drop from the program and seek medical assistance. Struggling to work and make ends meet, her declining health soon became too debilitating resulting in severe depression again with suicidal ideation due to hopeless pain and sickness. Suicide rates are exponentially high for Lyme patients due to the severity of the disease on the body and brain and the lack of understanding. Often the disease is invisible and the patient will "look fine", making it harder to diagnose and patients left with hopeless confusion and isolation.
Luna, Cassie's beautiful service animal is always by her side on her healing journey.
Pollution masks have become regular due to her increased autoimmune nature and multiple chemical sensitivities.
With very limited working energy and increasing medical costs, Cassie was faced with no choice but to reach out to family. This brings us to today, where Cassie has made great improvement, with treatments and hard work from her and her family, however is still unable to return to work and school and her family has reached their limit on what they are able to provide. Cassie needs assistance from you and from the community to return to life, to return to world of growth and to spreading awareness of mental and physical health through the process of artistic expression. Please join us in donating $5, $10, $20, whatever you can spare towards Cassie's battle against Lyme and getting her life back.
And please, check back frequently as we will be updating this GoFundMe with Lyme information, resources, social networking, and opportunities. This is an ever evolving campaign, and Cassie will continue to provide progress status, inspiration, education, and personal story. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to join us in spreading awareness and building a Lyme network in Seattle, please contact:
Chase M. Torbergson, LMHCA
[email redacted]
todayscouseling.com
Cassie wearing her AWARE causes necklace. White represents invisible illness.
Cassie is excited about building her online connections within the chronic illness community. Please find her on Instagram ( @cassiemoi ) to watch her journey and communicate via messaging about any questions or just to build a bigger community of understanding friends. #youarenotalone #fightforacure #invisibleillnessawareness
POTS info and facts
Lyme and Co-infection info to come....
In a nutshell, Cassie has been diagnosed with Late Stage Chronic Lyme and Neurological Lyme Disease and POTS. After battling with Lyme symptoms almost her entire life she was eventually forced to quit working, at which point her family stepped in to help cover the costs of treatment which has been ongoing for almost two years. Foremost in these efforts was her life saving grandmother, dipping into retirement savings to help Cassie get back on track.
While great strides have been made in Cassie's recovery journey, she is still very ill and disabled, and just as importantly is still unable to return to her passions. This fund was established because Cassie's family has run out of funds, savings and retirement accounts emptied. With nowhere else to turn to they reach out to the community.
If you've found your way to this page you may already be familiar with the sinister symptoms and misdiagnosis' common to Lyme, the invisible illness, and if not, please continue reading. Below is Cassie's story, her life, her illness, and where the road goes from here. This page is not only intended to assist Cassie and her family in such needed assistance, but to help spread awareness and support for Lyme and those suffering around the globe.
Thank you for finding us, and thank you for staying with us.
Chase M. Torbergson, LMHCA on behalf of Cassie Moi
Cassie and "Mama Moi"
Cassie was born in Thousand Oaks, CA where she was raised by her single mother. They moved frequently as her mother made every possible effort to enroll Cassie in the best elementary schools, but this made it difficult for Cassie to establish lasting relationships with other children. It was around this time time when she was diagnosed with ADD and ADHD. Around the age of six she experienced a significant trauma. This is not the focus for this campaign, but a life-time journey that Cassie may choose to share in another medium to help spread awareness and healing.
Eventually returning to Thousand Oaks Cassie began attending Westlake High School. It was during this time that she began to experience the first significant stages of her declining health, signs and symptoms that would stick with her for her entire life. She began to experience gall bladder attacks, repetitive kidney infections and stones, body aches and joint pain, shooting pains in her organs, migraines, sore throats, panic attacks, insomnia, brain fog, nausea, bloody noses resulting in trips to the ER, and severe asthma. The extreme fatigue that began to settle over her resulted in long periods of missed school, up to three weeks at a time.
Rumors over her absence began to circle within the student population, and unable to adequately explain the rapid decline of her physical health, Cassie began to suffer from depression and anxiety. Due to the invisible nature of Lyme symptoms her family was unreceptive, and unable to see how much she was suffering on the inside. Because of her "deficiencies" and with a lack of support or understanding Cassie began to reach out to her doctors. This period of poor health, endless pain and isolation from the world took an even heavier hit on her mental health, and Cassie began to feel suicidal. She describes this period in "cycles of hidden depression," a very common Lyme symptom. Local doctors dismissed her symptoms as "all in her head" and began to "throw pills at her", birth control, Ibuprofen, loads of antibiotics, and an antidepressant which drastically increased her suicidal ideation and caused more harm to her body.
But never one to give up without a fight, Cassie continued to live for the moment, making the most out of brief periods of energy and hope. She dove into the world of outdoor activities, taking up snowboarding, surfing, skateboarding, mountain biking, anything to get up and push herself. She made close friends who were supportive and understanding, surrounding herself with love and activity. Due to the support from her friends, a select few teachers, and a very understanding dean of attendance, Cassie graduated.
Cassie with her Grammy and their matching sweatshirts!
She began to attend Santa Monica College, working two jobs and ever increasing health care costs. It was here that arts professors l noticed and believed in her natural abilities. Cassie focused more than ever on powering through bouts of depression, chronic pain, and fatigue. She began to take charge of her health, learning preventative measures and ultimately attaining straight A's and the honor roll. She was asked to join a prestigious mentor program and by the age of 19 her work was on display in LA, Hollywood, and Santa Monica art galleries. After college she began to assist the amazing painter, Deedee Cheriel, and learned first hand what it meant to be a working artist.
In 2015 she moved to Seattle, WA in search of a better climate (severe heat intolerance from POTS is common) and new artistic opportunities. In 2016 she was accepted at the University of Washington for their Visual Arts and DXarts programs. These were challenging programs catered to Ph.D. students. It was here Cassie began to work large scale on interactive installations. She began to explore themes of anxiety in her work, "inducing the feeling to spread awareness". She describes the "hidden anxieties behind an artists confidence" through her audio visual works. She explains that art provided an aspect of life where anxiety was okay, even needed and compelled to be expressed to spread awareness.
Cassie's installations were shown at the DX Arts Fab Lab, Brain Freeze gallery, and on exhibit in Ni Modo's popup gallery at MoPop and she began to teach mechantronic art workshops for kids. In a repetition of history another professor took to Cassie's innate abilities, and she was invited to join a premier mentorship. But this period of achievement and excellence was to be short lived, and during the horrible wildfires of 2017 severe smoke inhalation crashed Cassie's health. She became bed ridden for weeks at a time, and many symptoms of the past resurfaced in what would become a normal cycle of health and recession.
Along with the familiar chronic pain, joint inflammation, migraines, and fatigue, Cassie developed a host of new difficulties including impaired balance and eye hand coordination, body paralysis, light, sound, and scent sensitivity, tremors, tinnitus, visual hallucinations, an inability to read screens, comprehension and communication issues and eventually seizures sometimes lasting hours at a time. Comprehension difficulties and memory impairment coupled with an extreme sensitivity to lights and electronics made it so Cassie was unable to continue working in DX arts. She was forced to drop from the program and seek medical assistance. Struggling to work and make ends meet, her declining health soon became too debilitating resulting in severe depression again with suicidal ideation due to hopeless pain and sickness. Suicide rates are exponentially high for Lyme patients due to the severity of the disease on the body and brain and the lack of understanding. Often the disease is invisible and the patient will "look fine", making it harder to diagnose and patients left with hopeless confusion and isolation.
Luna, Cassie's beautiful service animal is always by her side on her healing journey.
Pollution masks have become regular due to her increased autoimmune nature and multiple chemical sensitivities.
With very limited working energy and increasing medical costs, Cassie was faced with no choice but to reach out to family. This brings us to today, where Cassie has made great improvement, with treatments and hard work from her and her family, however is still unable to return to work and school and her family has reached their limit on what they are able to provide. Cassie needs assistance from you and from the community to return to life, to return to world of growth and to spreading awareness of mental and physical health through the process of artistic expression. Please join us in donating $5, $10, $20, whatever you can spare towards Cassie's battle against Lyme and getting her life back.
And please, check back frequently as we will be updating this GoFundMe with Lyme information, resources, social networking, and opportunities. This is an ever evolving campaign, and Cassie will continue to provide progress status, inspiration, education, and personal story. If you have any questions or comments, or would like to join us in spreading awareness and building a Lyme network in Seattle, please contact:
Chase M. Torbergson, LMHCA
[email redacted]
todayscouseling.com
Cassie wearing her AWARE causes necklace. White represents invisible illness.
Cassie is excited about building her online connections within the chronic illness community. Please find her on Instagram ( @cassiemoi ) to watch her journey and communicate via messaging about any questions or just to build a bigger community of understanding friends. #youarenotalone #fightforacure #invisibleillnessawareness
POTS info and facts
Lyme and Co-infection info to come....
Organizer
Todays Counseling LLC
Organizer
DesMoines, WA