Help Aryan find a safe home for Remi

Hi, I am terrified doing this but at the suggestion of multiple people I think I will at least try. I am 37yrs old, a mom, my son Remi is a beautiful little boy who loves to make people smile just before he will try to sneak up and scare you. He is quite the character but we are struggling right now. We are homeless, living in a moldy RV with no working fridge and about to go through a lot medically.

Some back story, I was run over by a car at 19yrs old, had my first back surgery at 23, have been in physical therapy and had more spinal injections than I can count. I got pregnant with Remi in April 2019 and the very first thing the doctor did was talk with me about getting a medically necessary ab0rtion because the pregnancy and delivery could potentially leave me paralyzed. I said no, I considered what to do for a few weeks but in the end, I just knew he was meant to be here. I didn’t leave the pregnancy and delivery unscathed but I did have a beautiful little baby boy that I couldn’t stop staring at. There was further damage to my lumbar spine but life kept going and we kept moving forward.

I started noticing symptoms that weren’t typical for me about 4yrs ago. I spoke to multiple doctors but they wrote me off, saying I was fine and it was the normal pattern of degeneration for my spine. I had a lumbar fusion in 2022 and it worked! For about 8 months. Then I started having pain again, burning, tingling, pins and needles down both legs, once again the doctors said, ‍⚕️ “Your spine.” So I continued getting injections, physical therapy, and I started trying to exercise to lose weight. Nothing was working like it normally did, I wasn’t sleeping for more than 2hrs at a time, my eyes moved rapidly from side to side when I laid down, I started feeling my brain slowing down, and I had difficulty with things I had always excelled in. Suddenly my ability to think quickly and act on my feet was gone, I lost my quick wit, the most frustrating was that I was forgetting words! Not just forgetting them, I couldn’t even speak them. I was suddenly stuttering and taking long pauses when I spoke. More time passed and this is just how things went, I thought it was me getting older, maybe the pain medicine I take, I even thought maybe because I don’t read anymore I just wasn’t as smart as I used to be but when I read my eyes hurt and I got headaches.

I went back to talk to my doctors and again, they said, ‍⚕️ “You’re fine.” More injections, more physical therapy, more exercise but things were getting harder, I was noticing days where I was a completely different person but I blamed external factors because what else? I was fighting to function to provide for Remi and I was failing to protect him from being affected by my problems. So much pain, physically and emotionally, I wasn’t sleeping, I couldn’t stay awake even if I was standing up having a conversation. I had to stop working, July 2024. I wasn’t reliable and I was alienating my coworkers with my personality changes. I was in constant pain and drowning in responsibilities I couldn’t manage anymore… and I didn’t know why.

I applied for services in August 2024, State and local. I started receiving $531/month from the State in October, we didn’t qualify for assistance programs because they were out of funding or I owed too much money for my house for them to help. I managed everything while the debt climbed and still no answers.

Remi’s 5th birthday, Dec 2024, after a long day I sat down and suddenly there’s electricity in my head, my brain is zapping like electricity⚡️!?!?! My first thought was that I was having a stroke or aneurysm so I went to the ER. Once again, the doctor said I was fine, did a cat scan and sent me home. Small town, holiday season, no urgent care, I wasn’t getting in to my doctor for a few weeks, so I waited and finally got in to see her in January 2025. She was alarmed right away, everything I have been telling my other doctors for years, every word horrified her. She got me in to so many tests and the flood gates opened. Sleep Apnea, Chiari Malformation, allergic to protein in milk, early menopause, so many spinal injuries/degenerating discs, a few have worsened to a surgical correction level. It felt like Everything was failing me. On the brink of homelessness, failing health, no help from any direction. The silver lining, the Chiari made so much sense of everything I had been experiencing, difficulty swallowing, forgetting words, not able to speak, personality and behavioral changes, increased pain symptoms, disturbed sleep(also the sleep apnea) but mostly the headaches that are spawned from Hades and forged in Dante’s Inferno, they are beyond any migraine/cluster migraine I have ever had. They are the worst things I have ever lived through. It was all there in the diagnosis plus all the others I now have to adapt to or get treatment for.

Now, I’ve lost the home I worked so hard to buy and remodel, the place where Remi had his own sensory room and that we planned to be able to sell and get us into a better home in the future. We were getting kicked out so I did a quick sale for less than it was worth, paid off the debt on it and bought a small 1979 RV.

A tiny RV with mold, no working electric( we use extension cords) which means the RV fridge doesn’t work, so we can’t store fresh food. I reapplied for services but now we don’t qualify because we don’t have a home. Isn’t that a wonderful system. There are no shelters for 200miles, and they are at capacity because there are so few in our State. There are hardly any services in this rural are we live in but the ones we do have require a permanent address/home to help. We’ve asked all the questions, applied for all the help, nothing has worked out.

Remi and I have been getting respiratory infections for over a month so I think it’s black mold in the walls. I am draining our savings and I am at the point of not being able to even keep my phone on. We are in serious financial distress. I would be eternally grateful to receive help to get out of this RV. If I can pay for an apartment for 6mos, get the brain surgery, get another fusion, recover in an actual home while we wait for housing(we have another 6 month wait) and after that I can start my life all over again. I’ve done the hard work before, I just need help to get that step up and I know I can do it. I don’t want to be recovering in a hot RV with mold after having a brain surgery, I don’t want to see Remi sick all the time, I don’t want to watch this trauma etch itself further on him. I don’t want to fight to pay for us to live while we are already homeless because we can’t afford the lot rent with what the State pays us to live on every month. I know, that’s a tall order, and I know it’s not anyone else’s responsibility so I have no expectations. I will be forever indebted to the people who have made living during this time so much easier, for whatever my gratitude is worth, you have all of it. With love and gratitude from Remi and Aryan.