Help Rachel with treatments and needs

We are Sarah and Cara, friends to the Farney family. We are gathering the troops to show support for Rachel and to ease the financial burdens on her and her husband, Kole. It is true that any dollar amount big or small adds up to help. It’s been difficult to know how to help them over the last couple years, as we’ve seen Rachel fight for her life. This is a practical way that we can show our support for her and her family. Please read and consider giving.

Some of you know parts of our friend Rachel’s story. We’ve seen glimpses of her suffering; suffering of the mind, body, and spirit so unfathomable, it has brought many of us to our knees pleading for relief for her.

The causes of her suffering in brief summary include autoimmune illness, Lyme disease, mold illness and a severe neurological injury (akathisia) from a prescribed medication. Most of us cannot pretend to understand

the depths of pain and torment that she has withstood. We are so overjoyed to know that she’s recently experienced a little relief, yet she has a continued journey of healing ahead of her.

Please support her. This journey will be expensive, as most effective therapies are not covered by traditional health insurance. The Farneys also had to leave most of their belongings and house behind and are needing to literally rebuild everything.

Help us reach and surpass our goal to give generously to the Farneys. Without financial assistance, she cannot receive therapies that she needs now.

To hear more about her story,

you can read Kole’s update from earlier in September (pasted below).

Please reach out to him or Sarah or Cara if you’d like to hear of additional ways to come along side them in support. Please continue to pray for Rachel and Kole and their two beautiful sons.

From Kole:

Dear friends and family,

Thank you for your continued prayer and support of our family. Since Rachel came back to life on April 30, 2023, we have been soaking up whatever time each day the Lord gives us. The boys are barnacles on her, and so are the dogs (and also the husband.) We missed her so deeply for so long and the life she has is so fresh that we are still surprised when we can sit with her and hug her.

Health

What Rachel experienced was really something only captured by a death to life type of metaphor. The switch when she got out of the mold's grip was and remains remarkable. However, she remains severely compromised and is very weak in many ways. In April she came out of a -100 situation on a 1-10 scale and was set back to 0 or 1. She was alive again and with hope of healing but still at the bottom.

Each day is unpredictable in some ways but typically she doesn't sleep very much at all and wakes up in the middle of the night and the Akathisia symptoms of burning skin, pain, inner terror, and others are very bad and totally overwhelming. Sometimes this lasts until mid-morning or later. The severity fades as the day goes on and then often begins to ramp up again in the evening. Going to bed is very scary every day because she knows whats coming every time she wakes up.

Her body and brain are on the incredibly slow path back to a semblance of health, and that is a hard reality, but we are still so thankful that she is alive. If you see her out an about, know that she is likely the sickest person you will see that day, even if she appears "normal" to your eyes. Every hour is a fight but she is the undisputed champion of the world every day in my eyes.

Housing

Since the beginning of July we have been living in our own RV at my parents farm. Life with a family of four living in 340 square feet is pretty tight! The boys are literally on top of us quite often. It is a bit like living in a jungle gym because certain things have to be stored in high cabinets which are only accessible with a step-ladder by everyone but me. It is truly a recreational vehicle in the sense that living inside requires some measure of acrobatics!

How long can we live this way? Well I’m not sure. When you compare it to living in a spacious house while Rachel is dying, we could do it forever! When you compare it hypothetically to having a safe space for our family that is attached to the ground and modestly sized with a full bathroom and kitchen, we would move tomorrow! There is a reason people camp in RVs and live in houses (lol).

Some sad news: Rachel cannot go inside very many places except our RV. Since moving out of our house, we have tested what places Rachel can go into, and what places she can spend more than a few minutes in. This has resulted in her having pretty significant spikes in symptoms later in the day or the next morning. Mold is in lots of houses and buildings, and even in small amounts it has the power to compromise Rachel in extreme ways. This means that she spends her time outside or in the RV. This is a hard thing. With fall approaching the thought of being outside is awesome but the winter following is a threat.

Some happy news: the Lord has given us a lot in town to build a house on! I’ve been talking to builders and researching construction materials and methods that mitigate moisture transfer and presence. Without moisture mold doesn’t become a problem. There are ways to build that can totally seal a house up and make it a place where Rachel will be safe for the long haul and also allow us to have people in our life and home because we have made the tough decision to build something larger than 340 square feet! These construction methods are quite a bit more expensive and can take a little longer as well.

This week our old house is being remediated by a professional mold removal company so that we can fix it up and sell it. After they are done we will have to replace some wall studs, insulation, and drywall before it is ready to be someone else’s home. As it is, even if we did no remediation our house would be fine for a normal family, but it will never be totally safe for Rachel because of how sensitive she is to mold.

Hope

We’ve had so many days in past three years where our hearts couldn’t bear to hope or even begin to try. As we stumbled in the dark over and over, hope for a future before the resurrection was nothing but a fleeting memory.

Psalm 88:3-5

[3] For my soul is full of troubles,

and my life draws near to Sheol.

[4] I am counted among those who go down to the pit;

I am a man who has no strength,

[5] like one set loose among the dead,

like the slain that lie in the grave,

like those whom you remember no more,

for they are cut off from your hand.

Bad memories and moments still haunt our hearts daily. These specters can heal with time and grace, but for now they are close at hand. Satan loves such horror. The enemies of Jesus seek to keep us terrified.

However, the sun keeps coming up and we have remained. We have big time anxiety thinking about the morning where the grip of Rachels symptoms that re-appear each day don’t go away. It is too much to bear. Just that fear alone is crippling. We want to run with the Lord again, but many memories are bloody arrows in our hamstrings that mock us as we limp. God deliver us!

Please keep praying!

Pray that we could quickly sell our current house for a very good price and that the Lord provides the funds and correct method to start building a safe place for Rachel ASAP.

Pray for me as I think about how much I can work while still being available for her so we can eat and pay our bills.

Pray for the boys who want to make up for all the lost time with their mom every day.

Pray that all of our hearts would learn again and again how to trust the Lord!

Pray for all the people we are now connected to and trying to help who experience Akathisia and other horrible things as a result of prescription medications, mold, Lyme, etc.

Pray for the hurting people near you and find ways to reach them in sacrificial love. In a world of suffering, people need to experience Jesus through the warm kindness of his people.

All our love,

Kole