Support Samantha's Fight Against COPD

Dear Friends, I have struggled with how to come to you with this. I wrote a little something and posted on Facebook a few weeks ago but I haven't expressed much about it because I'm still taking it in. And I didn't want to add my bad news to all the other bad news we're struggling to cope with. But here I am because I need help and I'm willing to take the risk of reaching out and asking because the stakes for me now are high.

In December, I went to the ER, thinking I was having a heart attack. It was the third time, in several months, I had emergency visits with symptoms of heart attack. Because I was having such pronounced problems breathing, they did a chest scan in addition to the heart monitors. The scan revealed hyperinflated, scarred and damaged lungs, consistent with Emphysema, fairly advanced. It was a huge shock, as I have been non-smoking for over 40 years and live a pretty healthy lifestyle.

I have lived with asthma, well managed with natural treatments, for decades. Years of living through fire season in California probably contributed to my current situation. We now live on the Oregon coast, with excellent air quality but the previous exposures to smoke and pollution from large scale fires had an impact that was more than I knew. My warnings of this diagnosis were that, I noticed the natural treatments I had been using for asthma were not as effective as they had always been and I was slightly breathless after my usual dog walks with Albie and I experienced a fatigue that wouldn't lift after resting.

I'm the patient who cannot use the drugs allopathic medicine prescribes for this condition. I'm the one who has all the 'side effects' right away, making the treatment worse than the illness. The steroid inhaler prescribed actually suppresses the immune system in the lungs. What? I began researching alternatives and found multiple, in-depth studies done over time, showing stem cell therapy as effective in both arresting COPD and in some cases, reversing damage. Emphysema, my diagnosis, is a type of COPD. The good news is my heart is healthy and strong so far. I found a functional medicine clinic in Oregon that offers stem cell treatments. It's the alternative that could help me live and live better. The funds will go towards the stem cell clinic treatment

I'm coming here to ask for your help in order to get the treatments that I believe could give me a better quality of life, and possibly reverse damage to my lungs. I'm fully insured but none of it will pay for these treatments. My husband John and I, both in our seventh decade, are still working as much as we can. John works locally but also travels all the way from Oregon to California for work. But the cost is still beyond what we can pay. Because of COVID, what happened in the housing market just as we moved to Oregon and steep increases in construction costs, sometimes double the estimated costs, our reserves were depleted, we incurred some debt and we now live month to month.

What makes my cause worthy of your contribution? Yeah, you might imagine, given the current world situation, how I wrestled with this one. Then I was given a flash of insight that it's not up to me. That determination is for you to make. If you are moved to help me get some stem cells, so I can live and live better, thank you from my soulheart. It is my intention and my hope that my life will always be a contribution to our collective life. May it be so.