Kelli Williams' Medical Fund
Donation protected
My name is Josiah Tereno. Lately I have started living with my girlfriend, who takes care of her mother. I have only lived there for a few months, but I have learned of a most painful reality.
My girlfriend’s name is Jess. She has lived at home with her mother, Kelli, all her life. Kelli suffers from a unique disease known as Lymphedema, also known as Elephantiasis. This disease is devastating, as it causes the fluids that are normally drained by the lymph nodes to be stored in places that they are not meant to be. In Kelli’s case, this is both of her legs and, recently, the left side of her torso. The amount of fluid that is stored can be absolutely astounding, as the swellings, or ‘edemas’ can weigh up to 60 to 70 pounds at one time. Imagine a 60 pound waterballoon hanging from the underside of her thigh, behind her knee, and you understand her situation. She has several of these edemas, and the only treatment for this disease is to compress the edemas using large bandages, medical issued pumps or straight up hand squeezing, in hopes that the fluid is redirected where it is supposed to go. If the disease remains untreated, the skin on the edema is easily infected, and if it receives any kind of abrasion it will scab and weep, forming scar tissue and (you can imagine) a lot of pain. Kelli has had this disease for more than 10 years, and has received medical help for only a fraction of that time.
When Kelli first got the disease, she was strongly mistreated by the local hospital, to the point of shaming. Kelli had always been a heavyset woman, and so the walking distance from her car in the parking garage to the top floor of the large hospital she was appointed was large enough that a request for a wheelchair should not have been denied, but it was. Every visit. At the time of Kelli’s initial contracting the disease Lymphedema did not, and to our knowledge, still does not have a cure. It is treatable, but the hospital that was treating Kelli did so in a manner that hardly befit a prisoner, let alone a respectable patient.
At each of her visits, the doctor and nurse would wrap Kelli’s legs in a large compression bandage, from toe to hip. She was then instructed not to shower for a week, until she came back to have the bandage replaced. This meant that she would be able to shower exactly once a week, despite the remarkable buildup of sweat and body soil that naturally occurs when someone is forced to wear a heavy bandage, let alone two of them, that cover most of someone’s body. She was then expected, once having been sufficiently bandaged, to walk through the hospital, back through the parking garage to her car, with no help from any available orderly or wheelchair. The car was also a manual, which is almost impossible to drive when one’s knee cannot be bent at all.
Because of these remarkably inhospitable visits to the hospital, Kelli stopped going to the hospital and relied on the treatment being performed by her daughter, Jess, and her son, Ben. Inconveniently, when Kelli first contracted this disease, she began going through a divorce, becoming a single mother for a 13 year old daughter and a fifteen year old son, with a beat-up house with a mortgage and no job. The divorce was long and painful, spanning multiple years and becoming a serious drain on funds until it finally went through. Despite the divorce, disease and mobility issues, for several years Kelli still performed all the tasks expected of a responsible mother, such as errands and necessary shopping and the like. Additionally, she was an enthusiastic volunteer for the church in the children’s ministries, running AWANA, completing all the bookkeeping and planning all the fundraising for the church. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that all of the fat-shaming performed by people out in public caused Kelli to have had enough of it, and all of these tasks fell on Ben and Jess, who were 18 and 16, respectively, at the time. The edemas caused by the disease cause the skin to swell, in strange places, so this was perceived by the public as just being fat, which is despicable, both that they would make such a judgement and that they would display such hate to someone different from them, whether because she had a condition or not.
When Kelli’s divorce began, she had the serious problem of being unemployed with two kids and a house to pay for. As a stroke of luck or a miracle, she received a remote job working for Pokerstars Online, a European based company that needed moderators and managers for their chat department. A full time at-home job! It was perfect for her. The pay was almost exactly the same that her husband had made when they were together, so their bills were covered.
For the next 9 years things progressed slowly, as Ben and Jess took care of Kelli. The home treatments did not stop the spread of Lymphedema, but they did slow it. Over the 9 years, she worked, and she was taken care of by her children, and the disease slowly got worse, her legs swelling more and more and the fluid filling into her calves. Not long after Ben turned 20, he moved away, leaving Jess to take care of Kelli on her own.
I met Jess 2 years ago, and I’ve begun living with them about 5 months ago, helping out as much as I can and working and going to college myself. I am very happy living there, and I learned only recently that the house that we live in now used to be a meth house, and was run-down and mostly trashed. Kelli and her husband had been working to repair and make it liveable. Lately, Kelli has been funding and working to build the house back up to something respectable. I myself performed an entire remodel on their kitchen and bedroom, but it was not to last. Last month, Pokerstars Online announced that they were downsizing their chat department, and most everyone in Kelli’s department lost their jobs, including her. Once again unemployed, though this time completely unable to move farther than about 10 feet at a time and completely unable to sit down or lay down without someone’s help, Kelli is in trouble.
Because Kelli’s work was in Europe, and because she was no longer going to the hospital and hasn’t been to one in approximately 10 years, she does not have insurance of any kind. Tonight, on August 19th, Kelli fell from her bed, and had to be rushed to the hospital. She is there now, and I write this with fear in my heart and worry at my side. She is going to be struggle to pay for the help that she needs, the house, and simple food, so I hope someone can help.
My girlfriend’s name is Jess. She has lived at home with her mother, Kelli, all her life. Kelli suffers from a unique disease known as Lymphedema, also known as Elephantiasis. This disease is devastating, as it causes the fluids that are normally drained by the lymph nodes to be stored in places that they are not meant to be. In Kelli’s case, this is both of her legs and, recently, the left side of her torso. The amount of fluid that is stored can be absolutely astounding, as the swellings, or ‘edemas’ can weigh up to 60 to 70 pounds at one time. Imagine a 60 pound waterballoon hanging from the underside of her thigh, behind her knee, and you understand her situation. She has several of these edemas, and the only treatment for this disease is to compress the edemas using large bandages, medical issued pumps or straight up hand squeezing, in hopes that the fluid is redirected where it is supposed to go. If the disease remains untreated, the skin on the edema is easily infected, and if it receives any kind of abrasion it will scab and weep, forming scar tissue and (you can imagine) a lot of pain. Kelli has had this disease for more than 10 years, and has received medical help for only a fraction of that time.
When Kelli first got the disease, she was strongly mistreated by the local hospital, to the point of shaming. Kelli had always been a heavyset woman, and so the walking distance from her car in the parking garage to the top floor of the large hospital she was appointed was large enough that a request for a wheelchair should not have been denied, but it was. Every visit. At the time of Kelli’s initial contracting the disease Lymphedema did not, and to our knowledge, still does not have a cure. It is treatable, but the hospital that was treating Kelli did so in a manner that hardly befit a prisoner, let alone a respectable patient.
At each of her visits, the doctor and nurse would wrap Kelli’s legs in a large compression bandage, from toe to hip. She was then instructed not to shower for a week, until she came back to have the bandage replaced. This meant that she would be able to shower exactly once a week, despite the remarkable buildup of sweat and body soil that naturally occurs when someone is forced to wear a heavy bandage, let alone two of them, that cover most of someone’s body. She was then expected, once having been sufficiently bandaged, to walk through the hospital, back through the parking garage to her car, with no help from any available orderly or wheelchair. The car was also a manual, which is almost impossible to drive when one’s knee cannot be bent at all.
Because of these remarkably inhospitable visits to the hospital, Kelli stopped going to the hospital and relied on the treatment being performed by her daughter, Jess, and her son, Ben. Inconveniently, when Kelli first contracted this disease, she began going through a divorce, becoming a single mother for a 13 year old daughter and a fifteen year old son, with a beat-up house with a mortgage and no job. The divorce was long and painful, spanning multiple years and becoming a serious drain on funds until it finally went through. Despite the divorce, disease and mobility issues, for several years Kelli still performed all the tasks expected of a responsible mother, such as errands and necessary shopping and the like. Additionally, she was an enthusiastic volunteer for the church in the children’s ministries, running AWANA, completing all the bookkeeping and planning all the fundraising for the church. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that all of the fat-shaming performed by people out in public caused Kelli to have had enough of it, and all of these tasks fell on Ben and Jess, who were 18 and 16, respectively, at the time. The edemas caused by the disease cause the skin to swell, in strange places, so this was perceived by the public as just being fat, which is despicable, both that they would make such a judgement and that they would display such hate to someone different from them, whether because she had a condition or not.
When Kelli’s divorce began, she had the serious problem of being unemployed with two kids and a house to pay for. As a stroke of luck or a miracle, she received a remote job working for Pokerstars Online, a European based company that needed moderators and managers for their chat department. A full time at-home job! It was perfect for her. The pay was almost exactly the same that her husband had made when they were together, so their bills were covered.
For the next 9 years things progressed slowly, as Ben and Jess took care of Kelli. The home treatments did not stop the spread of Lymphedema, but they did slow it. Over the 9 years, she worked, and she was taken care of by her children, and the disease slowly got worse, her legs swelling more and more and the fluid filling into her calves. Not long after Ben turned 20, he moved away, leaving Jess to take care of Kelli on her own.
I met Jess 2 years ago, and I’ve begun living with them about 5 months ago, helping out as much as I can and working and going to college myself. I am very happy living there, and I learned only recently that the house that we live in now used to be a meth house, and was run-down and mostly trashed. Kelli and her husband had been working to repair and make it liveable. Lately, Kelli has been funding and working to build the house back up to something respectable. I myself performed an entire remodel on their kitchen and bedroom, but it was not to last. Last month, Pokerstars Online announced that they were downsizing their chat department, and most everyone in Kelli’s department lost their jobs, including her. Once again unemployed, though this time completely unable to move farther than about 10 feet at a time and completely unable to sit down or lay down without someone’s help, Kelli is in trouble.
Because Kelli’s work was in Europe, and because she was no longer going to the hospital and hasn’t been to one in approximately 10 years, she does not have insurance of any kind. Tonight, on August 19th, Kelli fell from her bed, and had to be rushed to the hospital. She is there now, and I write this with fear in my heart and worry at my side. She is going to be struggle to pay for the help that she needs, the house, and simple food, so I hope someone can help.
Organizer
Josiah Tereno
Organizer
Puyallup, WA