Joanna's Sickle Cell Health Challenge

Two days after Christmas in 1975, my family was enjoying a wonderful Saturday evening together. On that day, my father, Floyd Fisher, had a massive heart attack and died. The full responsibility of raising three young children, paying a mortgage, and providing a life for our family was immediately placed on my mother’s shoulders. I did not realize, at the time, how enormous that must have seemed to my mother; that was an “adult” problem. With the help of the people of the “community” that had formed around our family, we survived and prospered.

One of my goals in life is to do something to help someone, in a significant way, accomplish their life goal. I don’t believe that specific goal has been achieved yet. Nonetheless, I have been blessed by the opportunity to have been woven into the lives of some outstanding young people. I am thankful that Anthony and Renisha Ward allowed me the privilege of establishing a relationship with their daughter Joanna.

We all know that when we become adults we are faced with adult issues and problems. Parents know that when their children face these difficult adult situations the instinct is to “fix it.” When difficult times come our way we frequently wish we had a magic wand to make them vanish. However, sometimes the “fix” is that we have built a community around ourselves willing to step up and help.

Joanna is at a point in her life when she is faced with “adult” issues that she must deal with. I can also imagine that her treatment to cure her lifelong battle with Sickle Cell is filled with challenges that outsiders can’t realize. I am not her parent; I don’t have a magic wand; but I am part of the community that can step up and help lighten the load. We all know that financial burdens affect the mental and physical health that is needed to survive and prosper through these times. Your one-time gift, or multiple gifts, to this GoFundMe is to lighten the financial burdens that this episode in Joanna’s life brings.