Helen Stone is our beloved nurse at Merrill Gardens at the University retirement community. We've seen her trying to manage her husband's critical illness visiting him every day after work and still bringing her A-game to our residents and staff here. As a community, we thought it would be beneficial to start raising money to help Helen with all of Dan's significant medical bills.

Here's a little synopsis of Dan Stone. He's 55, an Air Force veteran, a Retired Assistant Police Chief, and Lead Security Instructor for a security company in Seattle, and the icing on the cake is he's a father of 4, a Stepfather of 2, and lucky enough to call Helen his wife.

Dan's anxiety and fear, sadness and severe pain when touched are through the roof due to the mass health complications he's going through. Here's how it started; after years of planning and saving, the excited couple finally moved into their very first townhome on 8/27/22. Shortly after, Dan suddenly fell ill and was admitted to ICU on 8/29/22. He has been in critical condition for 4 months. His body is not getting enough oxygen in his blood, and he is in danger of multi-organ failure. Put on a vent on 8/31/22 for severe respiratory failure and a coma was induced for 3 weeks. Diagnosed with Autoimmune Disease called Guillian Barre Syndrome. He could only blink his eyes for communication; other than that, he was completely paralyzed. He received 5 plasma exchange treatments to help generate clean antibodies with hopes of some improvement. It was unsuccessful. Dan endured many complications: MRSA pneumonia, urinary tract infection, blood clots in both legs, stage 4 pressure ulcer and sepsis twice. After several bronchoscopy procedures, he's still unable to cough and clear his lungs on his own. This caused his oxygen saturation rate to continue to plummet even with the vent working 100%. Moved to a long-term acute care hospital on 10/9/22. The first week he became septic again. He had aspiration pneumonia, and Ecoli in his urine and continues to have emergency bronchoscopies at the bedside because his lungs continue to fill up with fluid and his vitals continue to drop. He has had to be bagged, and manual resuscitators to ventilate a patient, multiple times. He had a blood clot removed from his right lung. The wound care doctor has done 2 surgical debridements. The wound is now in the bone and osteomyelitis has set in and still no improvement with movement or vent weening. Doctors say this will hopefully get better with time. The best case is six months but his case is severe. They are contemplating 1 to 3 years. When stable and able to have movement, he will go to an SNF for rehab as he will have to learn to talk, swallow, eat, use his arms and legs and hopefully walk. We are staying optimistic but it is extremely difficult.

If you feel the need to donate, we welcome any support for Helen, Dan, and their loved ones.