“Which credit card should I put the gas on?” were the words my mom hazily remembers hearing as she lay in a SICU bed hooked up to a ventilator and other life-supporting machines at Shock Trauma in Baltimore, MD. It was my dad, seeing her for the first time after watching her airlifted from Meritus Medical Center in Hagerstown the day before, on May 22, 2021. While relieved she survived, he was worried about overcharging their low limit, high interest, high risk credit cards filling up their 16-year-old Toyota minivan. It was 75 miles one way to Baltimore. Both my parents are disabled, and social security disability was their only income while my sister Elise and I were in college. We lived in a small apartment. My brother Joe and Elise had just graduated. None of us kids were working.

Hi there, I’m Alexis Duda, and I’m posting this GoFundMe on the 4th anniversary of my mom, Jackie Duda’s, life-threatening septic shock crisis. Our mom and dad are both disabled, my dad is a former carpet cleaner and my mom a former teacher-turned-journalist till her health took her ability to work full-time away more than a decade ago. She has Crohn’s Disease, POTS, hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos, and osteoporosis. Ever since I was in the fifth grade, my mom has been in and out of hospitals and used a wheelchair and mobility scooter to help her get to my soccer and basketball games and school events like National Honor Society and orchestra. My brother took me to my soccer tournaments, and we’d visit my mom in the hospital, and I’d show her my trophies. She was so proud. My mom has spent just about every major holiday in the hospital. Whenever EMS came to our house to take her, we always expected she’d return home. Until that day in May.

My mom had been going to the hospital a lot that spring. She woke us up that dreadful morning when she couldn’t move her left leg. As we usually did, we called EMS, and waved goodbye as they took her. My dad followed soon after and found himself in a nightmare situation in the ER where they couldn’t get mom’s blood pressure to stay up and the doctors were saying she needed to be flown to Shock Trauma because she was in septic shock. She had a colon perforation from undiagnosed diverticulitis and barely had an hour to live. She was in respiratory and heart failure and unresponsive. They put her on a ventilator and stuck a central line in her neck. The doctors told him to go home after they loaded her onto the helicopter, and the surgeon from Shock Trauma would call. Visiting hours, they said, would be over by the time she was out of surgery. If she came out of surgery. My dad came home, and my sister and I were scared, we never saw him look the way he did. He was like in a trance. He could barely speak. My sister Googled the word “sepsis”, and her heart sank. Our mom’s chances of coming home this time weren’t looking good. We all went numb.

My mom did survive. She’s a fighter, and she’s been fighting ever since. She did intensive rehab and occupational therapy. She learned to walk better. She did everything her doctor’s said, and more. She had to go through a lot of tests and procedures and a second surgery in Baltimore in December 2021, to reverse the colostomy that was placed in May to save her life. She and my dad put miles and miles on the old minivan, which eventually gave out and had to be replaced. They had to get hotels close to the hospitals in DC and Baltimore. They had to pay for meals. While insurance paid the hospital bills, the costs of gas, food, medical equipment, and lodging added up on those overburdened credit cards. We moved back to the Frederick area in 2022 because my mom had severe PTSD and wanted to be back on familiar turf where we had lived for 18 years prior. We had been staying in Hagerstown because the rent was cheaper. It was worth it to dump the moving costs onto those credit cards to see my mom’s troubled, medical trauma affected mind, put at ease.

My brother, sister and I all started careers after college. My sister and I helped my parents buy a modest home for stability in late 2023 and we live with them to save on living expenses. We help them in every way possible, but the one thing that still hangs over our heads is that old credit card debt, with interest rates of 28 – 32%. Mom has been working a little, writing part-time and doing public speaking as she is able. She is a vocal and relentless advocate for sepsis and people with disabilities.

My dad, with his rheumatoid arthritis damaged feet and hands, at age 68, went back to work, at Sam’s and then switched to our local Food Lion, in produce, to help pay the bills. He hobbles, but he’s always been a very hard worker. They agonize over those cards and why we didn’t start a GoFundMe as soon as Mom’s helicopter took off for Baltimore. We feel bad about it too, none of us thought of it at the time. We were all in shock and worried about our mom possibly dying and then trying to help her recover. It was a very hard time and mostly, just us. Mom did have a successful fundraising campaign three years ago to pay for critically needed dental services, for which we were so grateful, and we would like to ask for your help once more, to pay off this credit card debt once and for all.

The total debt of all five low limit cards, which the high-risk company will not consolidate to make the monthly payment lower, is currently $9,482.83. If she could just fundraise enough to pay off these cards, she would be overjoyed. She could then apply that $600 she’s currently paying every month, to other bills, like the monthly payment when we had to get a new furnace last year or help pay off their 2017 Honda that replaced the old minivan. I am sad watching her anguish over these bills every month, and my siblings and I are frustrated that we cannot contribute even more than we currently earn to help our parents. She’s suffered so much, and she’s overcome a lot. We’d love to see her rest a little easier when the first of the month and those bills come around. At the current rate, when she looks on the credit card website to see how long it will take to pay off that debt, it says 7 years. She’ll be 70 by then. And my dad, 75. Would you please consider helping them get rid of this credit card debt a little faster? We should have launched this GoFundMe four years ago, but better late than never and no time like today, the 4th anniversary of when she was fighting for her life and made it back home against all odds.

My mom’s dream is to establish a non-profit that could provide $5,000 block grants to families in financial crisis and are affected by sepsis. Sepsis is an acute crisis with lasting effects that are ongoing and expensive. She would like to help families avoid the financial stress we have faced.

If you cannot donate, we completely understand. Would you please instead share this fundraiser and help us spread the word?

Mom just started a podcast on YouTube, to help others affected by sepsis and disability. To hear the first part of her sepsis journey from Mom, herself, go to: https://youtu.be/AznzZxTsmJI. Links to the articles she writes about sepsis and chronic conditions are on there too.