Dear friends, 

This is Dona directly speaking now :); I wanted first to thank with all my heart Rob and the whole team of my husband's Tim coworkers for their full support since the day i got hospitalized and for creating this GofundMe campaign. I am so grateful even more that since now it was difficult for me to ask for help... a true mindfulness experience!

I wanted to update you and follow up with the campaign. I’m back home from the hospital after 12 days of hospitalization at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, since Friday end day... it felt so good and so surreal at the same time... and of course I was totally wiped out but coming back everyday more, step by step,
and feeling more alive. It's a real miracle!

What happened is that out of the blue i began to feel sick on July 2nd and thought it was just a cold or something ... then a few days later, it went so bad with chills, shivering, coughing and vomiting that we went to the urgent care doctor who first told us he wanted to verify if I had a pneumonia... we went to the ER, did the x-ray, all the blood and urine test and they sent us back home saying it should be ok it was certainly just a flu, but if I wasn’t getting better to come back... unfortunately, it got worse and 2 days later on Sunday 7th of July we went back to the ER where this time the doctor came and said he had to keep me at the hospital because there was a big threat of a dangerous pneumonia... It was so unexpected, I was scared, not understanding what was happening and thinking a lot about Shani, our 2,5 years old daughter.

They put me directly at the ICU in the hermetic room and the next days i went through a tremendous shocking and violent moment of my life, me who never take medication and who never went to the hospital! They had to find the right antibiotic and other medication combination and then they put me tubes and under a ventilator and did a bronchoscopy... I was under hard sedative, super alter state... very painful...that’s when they were worried that my body wouldn’t respond the right way as the x-rays were getting worse and that they would have to go for a stronger type of treatment... and i couldn't see Shani for more than 10 days, i was so down.

Thank Goddess, after a day and a half, they managed to take the tubes out of my throat, and put me under high level of oxygen as I couldn’t breathe properly and coughing very hard still... and here I am, I lost tones of weight and muscle mass, they really killed my gums with the treatments, they didn't find where it came from (very fancy name they give to say they don't know anything about it "Cryptogenic Organizing Pneumonia) and i’m going to take care of my deep recovery at all levels.
But as Lazaris said, i feel something that has deeply moved in me... i can’t fathom everything yet but i know some very positive things will come out of this traumatic experience... the choice to live fully my life certainly so!

Now, you may know that Tim and I are from Australia and France, we don't have family here and most of our community is brand new.  And like many families with new borns in the Bay Area, we've been struggling financially and have no reserves. 

So yes, as Rob and Tim's coworkers were saying, the fact that this life threatening medical event happened to me and the costs it will affect us with (Tim not working for almost all the time i was at the hospital, the medical bills, the recovery expenses, Shani's care that we need to find till end of August so that i can recover properly...) are very worrying. The system being what it is in the USA, we have Medi-cal for the moment but we are not sure that we can still have it and also if they will cover some of the expenses.

Along with our coworkers and friends, we are asking for help for our loving family at this very difficult
time. Please help in whatever way you are able. And we are deeply grateful and touched by all of you who already responded to the call and for your kind words. If any of the money collected is left after paying the bills, we want you to know that we will use that money for another family who is going through the same type of ordeal.

We can be reached directly. Dona's number is [phone redacted] and Tim can be reached at [phone redacted].


Thank you so much!