Hospital and Funeral Expenses

Stephanie passed away at 5:57pm today (4/16). This fundraiser has been transitioned to Funeral/Memorial Expenses.  All donations will go directly to Mason, Stephanie's husband, to assist him and the family with expenses from the hospital and funeral. Please consider donating and sharing.  
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This Fundraiser is to help with everyday life expenses and bills while Stephanie is recovering and her husband is by her side.

Stephanie Dunlow and Mason Smith are newlyweds! They were just married in Nov 2021.

Put yourself in their shoes and help any amount you can. Also the family is asking for prayers.

Below is the FB post Ashleigh made a week ago. *I'll have a family member send me an update to post.*

My (step) sister Stephanie went to the ER (in New Bern) last Monday night with a fever. She has lupus, so she has to be careful, even sometimes the smallest of things can be magnified because of it. Well, she was admitted because not only did she have a fever, her blood pressure and heart rate were high. She was initially diagnosed with bilateral pneumonia. After more tests, it was said that it wasn't pneumonia, it was a staph infection that had gotten in her blood. Then it was changed to a touch of staph pneumonia. Well, after more testing it was determined it wasn't that either. The final diagnosis was ARDS(adult respiratory distress syndrome). The infection and fluid is in her pleura(the sac/lining around the lungs) and was causing her to have trouble breathing, her oxygen to drop and her heart rate to be very high. It has also seeped onto her heart valve. Early Friday morning they decided it would be best to sedate her and put her on the ventilator and high powered antibiotics to allow her lungs and heart to rest and heal. Her body/lungs were fighting the ventilator so, on top of the sedation, she also had to be put on paralytics to stop her body from trying to fight the machine that is trying to save her life. On Friday the family was called in because the doctors were not expecting her to make it through the next 24 hours. But God! He brought her through that 24 hours and still has His hands on her! Throughout this last week, the doctors and nurses have been wonderful. They have been struggling to keep her blood pressure, fever and heart rate down all while keeping her oxygen up and trying to get her heart and lungs healed and let the antibiotics do their work. We have been taking it day by day.

She was airlifted to Chapel Hill last week and is now on ECMO.

Please help if you can.

We are happy to answer any questions.