Help A Disabled Woman & Cat in Crisis

My name is Tzipora. My cat, Tzeitel, and I have been fighting for our lives for more than 2 years now. We are homeless and without a car, struggling to find safety and stability.

I’m updating this fundraiser in July of 2024, still struggling but with some light at the end of this long dark tunnel. I’m leaving the original story but see both my update and some new info below the original story.

(Happier times together)

I am an autistic disabled woman with Chronic Intestinal Pseudo Obstruction / Intestinal Failure, Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, Dysautonomia, and a suspected Mitochondrial Disease, amongst other things. Due to the severity of my diseases, I am entirely dependent on IV nutrition & hydration which has been a major complicating factor in my situation. Malnutrition, chronic nausea, vomiting, and pain are a constant in my life.

(The last photo of us together in our Chicago apartment)

2022 has been a nightmare for us. I had been living in my dream and beloved city of Chicago for the last 5 years when the owner of the condo next to the one I was renting began months of construction chaos which lead to damaged belongings, a flooded bathroom, and the inability to rest or be sick in my own home. I fought & advocated to the best of my ability as my building underwent multiple management changes and the condo board ignored every letter I sent their way. Unfortunately I had already been struggling so much with greatly exacerbated health issues due to difficulty receiving medical care throughout the pandemic. I was also extremely isolated from these factors as well as just the lived reality of being someone with such complex medical needs.

In late January I lost someone very important to me, who had basically become my sole support system, in an abrupt and confusing way that left me devastated and truly alone. I was scared and exhausted and unsure I could or even wanted to live anymore. But I’ve always been a fighter- famously telling everyone how as an IVF baby born to a then 46yr old first time mom on IVF try number 5, that I’ve been defying near impossible odds since conception.

So I sought help. My palliative care doctor admitted me to the hospital with the goal of stabilizing my nutrition- something I’ve been managing entirely on my own for 12 years, doing dressing changes, giving IV meds, etc- and to get me a sub acute or short term rehabilitation stay to build up my strength and give me some time to amass assistance and explore options for help. Unfortunately, due to my age and especially the IV nutrition, not a single rehabilitation nursing home would accept me in all of IL.

I felt truly hopeless then. I was traumatized, alone, and not getting the help I needed. It was ultimately the love of my beautiful city that made me decide to keep going.

So I went to another hospital. Where I showed up severely malnourished & spent weeks battling refeeding syndrome, a life threatening complication of resuming nutrition when a patient is starving. Between Covid and it’s effects on healthcare, all the pain and trauma I was experiencing, and how frankly clueless the adult medical and mental health worlds are on adult autism I spent around 7 of the most medically traumatic weeks of my life in a hospital where the physical therapist refused to even meet me and I grew much, much weaker. We still could not find a sub acute rehab for me. Nor were there any real mental health options offered to me due to the medical complexity of my care.

Covid had also seen to the closing down of multiple large home infusion companies (the people who provide outpatient IV nutrition) and despite the hospital agreeing I could not survive or sustain myself without IV nutrition, I was discharged with none. They suggested I return to Michigan, where I was originally from for healthcare. I did not want this but I was so weak, scared, overwhelmed so it didn’t seem like I had any choice.

I cannot to this day wrap my head around all that occurred during that second long hospital stay. They even withheld IV nutrition the last 10 days or so I was there. So in a greatly weakened state with no IV nutrition, I was left to pack an entire apartment alone, forced to leave the city I loved, absolutely rocked by trauma and fear. I was lucky in the end to have elderly family members in IL who helped drive sweet Tzeitel kitty and I to Ann Arbor in late April.

I spent another month, in what was now hospital number 3 of the year. I was treated better but no one really had a good answer on what to do with me. A local shelter had a program for medically complex homeless people but they refused me due to the lack of an end date for my condition. Ironically, we easily found rehabilitation placement for me here in Michigan, but insurance refused to cover it for me. And I am now exceedingly weak and have no ability to really focus on rehab. Tzeitel was harbored for a month with a local animal shelter and was eventually returned to me with a chipped tooth and bald, irritated patches of skin on her belly (and this poor kitty lived for belly rubs above all else).

(This girl has been holding my hand through everything. She’s my biggest reason to keep fighting and has been with me through my entire illness journey)

Since late May 2022, Tzeitel and I have been bouncing around hotels in the Ann Arbor area. I miss Chicago every single day and hope to one day return. But right now my focus is simply finding a place locally and just having some stability to rest, recover, build up my physical strength, and heal. I am on disability and have Medicare (thank gosh. IV nutrition is itself very expensive) but finding pet friendly hotels with refrigerators for my meds and infusions cost so much more than I have. I’ve maxed out credit cards.

I am working and fighting so hard everyday to heal, to work through the myriad amount of personal & medical trauma I’ve faced while trying so hard just to survive. I have a local infusion company providing my IV nutrition though there are so many pandemic related shortages so my nutrition isn’t what it should be. I’m also having to find all new doctors. And while a car-free life was very doable in Chicago, it is not a possibility here. There’s also the moving company I will have to find a way to pay once I find housing.

Social service agencies were terribly backed up and it took months to make any connections at all. Unfortunately, because of both the cat and the fact that I have these large IV bags and IV medications that require refrigeration, no one really has known what to do with us. What help that has been offered is very one size fits all- which doesn’t really work when you’re a medical unicorn. So I am working with as many agencies and helpful people as I can find. But due to the lack of solutions when medically complex people find themselves homeless, it’s really mostly on me to sort things out.

This is where you can help make an enormous difference!

***UPDATE JULY 2024***

I need help again, urgently. One last push to finally get me home.

I am still in a hotel with the cat. Financially things are worse than before. I ran into some issues with my state benefits & unexpectedly received $400 less this month from Social Security and until I get things worked out with DHS, I’ll be getting less in upcoming months as well. I am at risk of losing my hotel & already lost my rental car. Tzeitel really needs vet care & potential costs are concerning given that she’s now 15 years old. And my moving company shut down and lost all of my belongings so now I’ll have to start over with nothing as I came to MI with just a suitcase & Tzeitel.

*** This is where the good news is and light at the end of the tunnel! ***

I was just back in Chicago earlier this week and I met with a fantastic TPN (IV nutrition) doctor at University of Illinois-Chicago and things could not have gone better! I’m also working with a great GI social worker at UIC and it sounds like we are getting the medical pieces in place but I need to be back in IL to really get going. I was much better positioned to make that move even just a few months ago versus now. So I’m cautiously optimistic but worried. My credit score has taken a hit and I’m not sure how to afford or find even temporary lodging in the city but it seems like the next logical step.

Chicago is & will always be my home and is where I belong. I mean look at this photo from my trip- I haven’t looked or felt this happy & content in years! Honestly, I’m feeling so good and just gunning to get back home and settled now.

(Shortly after my appointment at UIC.

My teeth are in terrible shape from the malnutrition & chronic vomiting and hadn’t been a focus given the battle just to survive, but let’s just say it means a lot to get a real toothy smile from me these days!)

In Michigan I have not been able to get much help and have tried everyone and everything I can multiple times over. There are so many ways life is actually easier and much more affordable in Chicago. I had been able to live surprisingly comfortably in market rate housing, paying almost all of my disability check in rent. Here it’s cost me about 3x more a month to exist in what should’ve been temporary but instead has been chronic, constant instability and endless scrambling to just barely survive for over 2yrs. I’ve had a few housing opportunities here in Ann Arbor fall through or not work out and ultimately housing is much harder to find and actually more expensive here, to say nothing of how necessary a car is which I still don’t have. Meanwhile in Chicago transit is plentiful, accessible, and would ultimately be free for me. And while I eventually found some great doctors here I’ve lost every one of them to moves or retirement.

So at this point Chicago is my best option by far. Medically and nutritionally I now have more going for me there than here. I felt so much hope being back in the city. And I see and am finding resources I didn’t know existed there. Having exhausted what seems available here in Ann Arbor and just feeling so alive and right in myself in my city, it seems worth it to make the leap and get back to where I’ve always belonged.

Tzeitel and I have been through the most extraordinarily difficult last few years but just as I had thrived in Chicago before, I know I can again. I’m excited by the idea of a stable and hopeful future in my favorite city and to be living again instead of just surviving. I’ve fought like hell to get back on my feet. Let’s get Tzeitel & me back and settled. It’s time to go home!

For full transparency sake- I raised $709 previously with my goal originally set at $3000. I need any and all help I can get but this time there’s a real path forward. Please help me finally get a foothold and some true stability. My sweet old kitty deserves some comfort in her last years. To have survived all we have, I must have so much more to offer this world.

Funds raised going forward will help cover vet care for Tzeitel, what’s needed to cover lodging the rest of my time in MI. I have a ton of points saved up with Hertz so when I’m ready this will pay for a car to get us back to Illinois. Hoping to get some money to help cover at least a month of some kind of temporary housing or hotel in Chicago or the surrounding area and help towards security deposit or move-in fees. Once settled my disability check will cover my rent and day to day needs but it’s getting back to that point and covering the basics once we are that is the challenge. I’ll update as we move forward.

I’m also looking for any resources or assistance in Chicago (as well as any place here in MI who might help me in the short term of with funds to relocate)- so any social service orgs, offers for assistance, anything out there that might help, you can send my way too at the contact link below or check out and share the website I started as further means of crowdsourcing assistance- rebuildingtzipora.wordpress.com

I am working hard with renewed hope, doing all I can, looking for any and all help I can find.

Thank you so much for reading and donating- Every little bit helps!