Donate to Help a Family Through Mom’s Surgery

Sheri needs open heart surgery to repair a deteriorated valve. She has been waiting for this surgery since 2020, but her doctors have delayed this life-saving intervention so that they could deal with a variety of health obstacles that threatened her chances of recovery. First, she had to work to get her diabetes under control. Then she faced a hysterectomy and tumor extraction. In the middle of all of these procedures Sheri suffered a broken back from falling due to heart failure and A Fib. Sheri then endured nerve blocking procedures for her back, full dental extractions, and monitoring of a 2cm growth in her lungs.

It’s been a long road, but after all of that she has finally been cleared for surgery! We finally have a date - August 8th!

For the past three years, Sheri’s family, and especially her husband and three children, have rallied to support her. They have used vacation time and family leave to provide daily care, take her to appointments, sit through her surgeries, respond to emergencies, and help her navigate the complexities of her care plans. Her husband, Robert, has been steadfast in his support of Sheri. They have both felt the strain of struggling to make ends meet and make mortgage payments, and still make appointments, with Robert’s small amount of PTO maxed out long ago.

Their daughter Amber has been a rock for them throughout these trials. Even if you only know her casually through her years at the old University Village Starbucks or more recently at Apple, anyone who knows Ambi is familiar with the depth of her compassion and her quiet strength. After the loss of her children’s father in 2020, she has been balancing the needs of her two children with those of her mother and the rest of her family as a single mother. Her brother Robby lives in North Carolina, and does what he can from afar, but isn’t able to do much hands-on day-to-day help. Her sister Jessica has dedicated her vacation days to supporting their mother, but as the director of a Montessori school in Colleyville, her time is extremely limited.

Sheri’s cardio surgeon estimates that she will need daily hands-on care until November 7th, at the earliest. The combined vacation and leave time available to family members amounts to about half of that time. They will need to take a month or more of unpaid time off of work just to deal with the immediate recovery period, and may need further time off if there are any complications. Donations will allow the family to take necessary unpaid time off of work, and/or hire in-home care to bridge the gap. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.