Raul and Darlene's medical bills and care

Hi, my name is Leo and this is a fundraiser for my dear friends Raul and Darlene.

Raul and Darlene changed my life when they invited me to live at their property and use their workshop for a boatbuilding project that I was planning. Even before we met, I was blown away by their kindness and their profound openness to strangers and those in need of help. Over the years that I spent there, they consistently treated me with so much love that they feel like family. It's also thanks to them that the Tally Ho rebuild project was able to start in the first place, and continue so successfully.

Over the last couple of years they have had a series of really difficult health problems.

Darlene has an aggressive form of ovarian cancer that has now spread to her lungs and liver. The chemotherapy and other experimental treatments that she has been going through have not been working as hoped.

Raul still suffers from the effect of a brain injury sustained many years ago, which causes debilitating seizures. Last year he also fell from scaffolding and shattered multiple vertebrae, which resulted in an emergency 12 hour surgery to fuse a large portion of his spine. He is recovering but is still very physically limited and needs intensive physical therapy.

Despite the exhaustion of illness and the side effects of treatments, Darlene is - amazingly - still working as a special ed teacher in local high school, partly for health insurance reasons - but obviously there will be a point where that is no longer possible. They have also been left with huge medical bills ($98,000) from parts of Raul's surgery and care that were not covered by insurance, and have a lot of ongoing costs from physical therapy, care, and frequent overnight trips to the hospital in Seattle for Darlene's blood infusions.

Raul and Darlene have touched many peoples lives with their broad kindness. I'm hoping that we can raise some money to help cover some of their medical bills and ongoing costs.

This fundraiser is going directly to the family. I'll start things off with a donation of $2000.

Please share.

Thank you,

Leo

Please note; Raul and Darlene's daughter also made a GoFundMe for her parents some time ago, which I shared at the time. Huge thanks to everyone who already donated to that.