I suppose it goes without saying, that I write this on behalf of my mother, my sister, and myself in hopes that we can provide comfort for my mother that she has slaved away her entire life to provide for us.

Most who find this page would already know of my mother's decade or more battle with breast cancer. Along with our family diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (characterized by both hypermobile & vascular symptoms), my mother's scoliosis, and her Harrington rod / lumbar fusion that she's had since her childhood. For those who don't know, links are attached to the name of each condition, and updates and information will be added over time.

The myriad of medical issues that have endlessly stacked over the years have left Reba on SSI / Disability in the state of Arizona. Her battle with cancer and the onset of both rheumatoid & osteoporosis arthritis meant that treatments and medication were always going to take a toll of some sort. Many treatments for one condition tending to exacerbate or form symptoms or conditions in other areas entirely. She has endured MANY surgeries since the beginning, and somehow managed to stay well and strong enough for a short period to avoid additional procedures until 2023. Where she had to have one of her kidneys removed due to the degenerative effects of the decade or more of medicinal treatments she had to undergo to manage her cancer, arthritis, cardiac (PVC/SVT's & POTS) issues, along with general pain management.

The 2023 procedure seemed to be another victory for her until her incision site began to show herniation of the tissue and lining. The hernia has been deemed to large to be done laparoscopically (as her kidney surgery initially was), and she will need to undergo a fully invasive and far more extensive surgery than before. This is of course a result that is most common for those with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, and leaves a risk that she may not even be able to be sutured with full confidence in her ability to heal. This issue has called for a rather hasty need for surgery to avoid rupture and infection or worse. She will undergo this surgery this July and has been given a pre-op consultation with her doctors that called for at least a YEAR or more to heal fully. (Now FULLY healed is a comical term for those of us with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome). She has not even fully healed from the initial procedure that removed her left kidney.

During this time she will be unable to do even the smallest of tasks she is accustomed to doing. As well as being less able to find additional ways to support her livelihood which is already held to a financial deficit due to being on disability. Her rent alone, along with her fellow retired neighbors; mysteriously increases alongside every increase to her governmentally supplemented income. I don't think it will come as much shock to inform many of you that state-provided insurance and disability do not always cover everything, nor do they cover the best treatments and doctors available, or on some days the bare minimum of quality.

We do what we can to compensate for these financial burdens. While balancing our own medical and financial hardships, we are lucky to have pulled off what we have over the years. As Ehlers-Danlos is a genetically passed condition my sister and I both live with as well, we carry our own cocktail of ever-evolving health concerns. My sister having survived a carotid dissection (stroke) in 2014, and myself surviving cardiac arrest during s surgery in 2015, so we both managed to come back from a flat line.

Reba has spent her entire life tending to the needs of others, and managed to care for and keep safe the two children she has through health scares, and escaping dangerous marriages. We have never gone without, and I can say that anyone who's been amongst her whether it be the closest of friends, or a total stranger has never gone without either.

She has survived so much, and been rewarded with seemingly so little over the years. In 2013 she came home to call our grandmother and inform her she was DRIVING HERSELF to the hospital after being on her feet for 10 hours at work. We later discovered that she had worked that entire 10-hour shift with several ruptures surrounding the sites where she had previously had a partial hysterectomy. Doctors gave us our diagnosis of Ehlers-Danlos years later after pairing a trinity of my mother's complications, and my sister and myself both surviving near-death medical emergencies. They put the puzzle pieces together and told my mother she would be in a wheelchair around the age of 50. She's going to be 60 this year, and she still has pushed herself out of bed on days just to go help friends with house cleaning, pet-sitting, or house-sitting. And her recent years would see little presence or involvement from most family outside our small circle.

Many of us would dream of being as strong as her in the same way we imagined being a superhero when we were children.

So if you have the means to support or the time to share this around in hopes of helping us find her the support she deserves, we would love to express our gratitude as soon as we can manage to find words that fit its magnitude.

Thank you all,