My name is Tom Tenney. For more than 30 years, I poured my entire heart into creating art working with Marvel, DC, Image, Comico, and even AC/DC. Art was my life, my identity, and the way I supported my family. But today I’m facing the hardest and most frightening chapter I’ve ever known. I’m in stage‑4 COPD, and my lungs are failing. I’m on oxygen 24 hours a day, 7 days a week just to stay alive. Even the smallest movement — standing, speaking for too long, walking a few steps — can leave me shaking, breathless, and fighting to keep my heart steady. Every breath feels like a battle, and every day is a race against time.

My life partner Christina is diabetic and struggling with her own fragile health while caring for her autistic daughter, who needs routine and stability. As my illness worsened, we moved north hoping things would improve — but instead, everything became harder. Especially over the last few months we've faced constant instability: sleeping on friends’ couches, sleeping in our car, and losing nearly everything we owned. Multiple hospital stays and my diagnosis have made it impossible to keep up. There are days when we face the choice of either a meal or oxygen.

As my condition worsens, the cost of my medical care has been eating up our what little money we had left. We are now at a point where basic survival is in jeopardy. We are struggling to afford food, essentials, medications, and the oxygen equipment I need to stay alive. Trying to manage an incurable disease like stage‑4 COPD while living in unstable conditions is dangerous, terrifying, and unsustainable. We are out of options.

This is truly life‑or‑death.

Your support directly helps keeps me alive.

Every dollar raised will go toward:

Life‑sustaining medications and oxygen equipment

Daily essentials — food, hygiene, safe shelter

Keeping our family together and stable during this crisis

I wish strength or pride could carry us through, but they can’t. Assistance programs have either let us down, have no funds or want to put us off for months. In our current situation, time is not our side. And without my art or the means to do art— the one thing I’ve relied on my entire life — we have no way to survive this.

I beg of you to please donate anything if you can. It helps keep air in my lungs, food in our stomachs and gives us a chance to make it through another day. If you cannot donate, sharing this GoFundMe means very much. Every share could reach someone who can help us stay alive.

Thank you for reading, for caring, and for giving us a chance to survive.

— Thomas A. Tenney