Please Care for Cindy: the love of my life

Friends, recently I’ve had to accept a terrible fact: that my dear wife, Cynthia Bidinotto-Slate, now needs more care than I, alone, can possibly give her.

This month—after she had endured years of devastating injuries and health crises—I was forced to place my beloved Cindy in an assisted-care home. Now, I face overwhelming monthly bills. I urgently ask you to help me pay for the ongoing medical treatments and loving personal care that my extraordinary wife deserves.

Cindy’s Background

My name is Robert Bidinotto. Nearly 21 years ago, I met Cindy Slate on a first date at an Annapolis waterfront restaurant. We opened the place at 5:30 p.m., and closed it after midnight! Yes, it was a great first date. From the first moments, I was enchanted. You can see from the photo that Cyn was a joyful creature, vivacious and completely authentic. Her laughter was like music. In fact, creating music has been her lifelong passion and mission, throughout her career as a professional pianist, organist, and accompanist. For decades she has touched—and changed—innumerable lives, including my own.

Cindy has given her great musical talents to launch countless marriages. She has given those talents at funerals, to comfort countless families in their grief. She has given them to her church and our regional chorale for twenty years, as their beloved soloist and choral accompanist, performing everything from familiar hymns to ambitious cantatas to seasonal concerts. She has given them to fellow pianists whom she has mentored and encouraged.

But Cyn has done more than just grace people with the gift of her music. Her gifts of time, money, friendship, comfort, and love also have been boundless. Never able to be a mother, she still had a mother's instinct for nurturing. She stepped in as a kind of “second mother” for children during crises within their families. She has always been there for seriously ill friends and family.

She has even saved lives.

For over seven decades, Cindy Bidinotto-Slate has given the world everything her passionate heart could give.

Now, at her time of crisis, I ask the world to give something back to her.

Cindy’s Medical Crisis

Cindy’s severe health problems go back to early 2020, when they forced an end to her musical career. Her inability to express herself musically, which was her life's passion, was devastating to her, and a huge factor in her declining health.

Contributing to that decline were a series of setbacks that had begun during the 2008 Great Recession, which wiped out her retirement investments. After that, Cyn became afflicted with crippling arthritis in her hands, which surgeries failed fully to alleviate. Then an excruciating medical condition led to chronic insomnia, which greatly increased her physical and mental stress. She also had to endure the death of both her parents, with her father passing away in January 2020.

It all became too much for her. Cyn spent nearly five months of 2020 being treated in a series of hospitals, where she began to suffer terrible falls and multiple head injuries. The worst of these was an accidental fall in a hospital bathroom, which resulted in a catastrophic neck fracture. By then, my lovely wife was down to about 82 pounds and almost non-communicative. As she departed in an ambulance for a Baltimore hospital in late October, I thought I'd never see her alive again.

Yet, after surgery and specialized treatment for the next two months, she somehow rallied. To everyone's joy and astonishment, Cyn was able to return home before Christmas, and in 2021 and 2022 she slowly recovered. Those two years were a precious gift of time to us that we never expected to experience.

However, near the end of 2022, Cyn experienced another devastating fall, striking her head on pavement. A case of COVID then led to lung irritation, which was treated with a steroid. The steroid interacted badly with other medications, and by late January of this year, she had to be re-hospitalized. Things became unspeakably bad this year. More falls, at home and in hospitals, caused a cracked sternum, additional head traumas, and injuries to her poor hands, including a fractured finger.

In recent weeks, I was forced into the agonizing realization that trying to manage her care at home, single-handedly, had now become an impossibility—dangerous to her health and my own. But I also realized that she would only continue to decline while lying in some lonely bed, warehoused inside the bleak, clinical, chaotic environment of some hospital or nursing home.

That vision was intolerable to me. I vowed to do everything possible to give my love the best care, in the most stress-free environment, that I could find for her.

And I have found it.

The Solution

Last month, I managed to arrange a nearly ideal placement for Cindy: a cheery, assisted-living home only five minutes from our house. The staff are among the sweetest people one could hope for. She shares with another resident a bright, spacious room with large windows that overlook the enclosed back yard. It looks like an English garden, with trees, plants, flowers, and stone walkways, and squirrels romping around a large gazebo. My girl is able to enjoy fresh air and sunshine outdoors, great home-cooked meals, a radiantly charming staff, entertainment, medical and personal care, physical therapy, visits from me and her local friends—even brief excursions back into our community.

Knowing that she's now safe and well cared for in such a nurturing environment is an enormous relief to me after a four-year nightmare. But I don't have to tell you how expensive assisted-living facilities are. Prohibitively so for me, because for long stretches of 2020 and this year, I could not work while I either directly managed or oversaw her daily care. I have drained our meager savings to pay for it. But it's not enough.

How Your Donation Will Help Cindy

Now that I can finally return to work, I can manage to take care of the regular household bills myself. But meanwhile, I need to raise the considerable funds to pay for all the continuing medical and personal care that my dear girl needs and deserves.

That's why I'm appealing to you now.

Your donations to this “Care for Cindy” fund will be funneled into the bank account I’ve established in her name. Every penny in that account will go solely to pay for her monthly assisted-living care, and medical expenses that aren’t covered by her insurance.

A few of us quietly celebrated Cindy’s 73rd birthday in late July. It was a poignant time as we reflected back on her rich and rewarding life. Throughout all her preceding years, Cyn’s generosity toward others has been boundless, as her many friends can attest.

Now, I ask you to reward her generosity with your own. I will be grateful beyond words for anything you can give to her.

Thank you in advance, on my dear Cindy’s behalf.