Friends and family…My cousin, Anna, has had an extremely challenging & overwhelmingly difficult life for most of her short 32 years. At an early age Anna found herself in many horrific situations due to things that weren’t necessarily of any fault of her own. Unfortunately, because of those situations she decided to turn to drugs for many years. Like many addicts, she’s tried & failed time & time again to get herself clean and her life back on track. It seemed as if it would never last. Fortunately, today she is & has been clean!! Although her now being clean is a wonderful thing the many years of using has taken a tremendous toll on her body/organs. Back in June Anna started passing out at home. Then she began to have seizures while being passed out. She passed out on the porch one day, seized, & stopped breathing. A friend found her, called 911, and performed CPR until EMS arrived. She was admitted to the hospital on a breathing tube while being sedated in an unresponsive state. The following night she flatlined & was brought back via defibrillator. A pacemaker/defibrillator was implanted in her. She is no longer in the hospital, but is in no way “out of the woods”. She was still getting very winded & dizzy & sometimes feeling like she may pass out at any moment upon release from the hospital, but since has been feeling slightly better. In the past Anna has often felt very unloved, unworthy, and hopeless because of the situations she’s put herself and inadvertently her family as well as her teenage daughter because of the drugs. Despite still facing the mountain of health challenges she is..this time she has started going back to church regularly and is very motivated to take her life back for herself as well as her daughter! There’s one more extremely excruciating situation she’s facing that she cannot change without the help of a community. Because of the drugs she has either lost or severely damaged nearly all of her teeth. To the point she can only eat soft foods & uses orajel around the clock and still faces enormous amounts of pain with her mouth/teeth daily. The teeth she does have left have now become abscessed & she is in even more pain. She is in desperate need of oral surgery & implants as the only way to rid her of the constant state of pain she is living in. Being able to eat, speak, & smile pain free is a very basic factor in someone’s quality of life & right now Anna is not able to do those things. I’d love to be able to surprise her & show her that people do still care about her despite her wrong choices in the past, that she is still loved, & that the world isn’t only filled with awful people like the ones she’s been surrounded by for the better part of her life. Anna’s purpose on this earth is not yet complete. There’s a reason she’s survived the countless times her life should’ve been taken from her. Only God can have the credit for that!! Sadly, my family cannot afford the overwhelming cost of the surgery & implants that has been quoted. The photo on this post is of Anna roughly 8-10 years ago. That’s the most recent one I have as it’s been that long since she felt comfortable having photos taken of her while smiling. Please consider donating to help give Anna her smile back, a newly found confidence, & most importantly a much improved quality of life!! Donation or not, I beg you keep her in your prayers/thoughts as she can never receive enough of those!! Thank you all from the bottom of my heart.❤️