Support Selina's Journey to Recovery

Hi, I'm Brooke, Selina's daughter. As most of you know, my mom has been having difficulty eating (swallowing) for the past several months. She has lost an incredible amount of weight due to these difficulties and has become very weak. Shortly after her 62nd Birthday, she was taken to the Methodist ER because she was no longer able to breathe. She was admitted, diagnosed and treated for aspirated pneumonia for about two weeks. We didn't think she was ready to leave the hospital, but she didn't appear to qualify for more critical care. The hospital staff arranged for her to be transferred to a rehab where she could get healthier over time. She was really looking forward to physical therapy and getting strong again.

About two days into her stay at the rehab, she went into cardiac arrest. Once while sleeping and then again at Methodist ICU. As you can imagine her recovery from pneumonia got much more complicated with broken ribs caused by the double resuscitation. She was immediately intubated and put on support medications to stabilize her blood pressure and relieve her of the incredible pain she was in. She was on the ventilator for about a week consecutively. We were terrified that she might have suffered brain damage due to the cardiac arrest but throughout her ICU stay where she wasn't asleep, she was communicating with us using an alphabet chart and even making jokes with her hands. She has remained in good spirits thanks to her regular visitors and caring ICU staff. She was not able to get enough oxygen without the ventilator, so the ICU doctors performed a tracheostomy. A few days later she went into surgery to receive a feeding tube. Both procedures went very well.

As of today, my mom is able to breathe on her own with periodic vent support to give her lungs some rest. She's got roughly 4 -6 weeks left for her ribs to completely heal. Her blood pressure is stable on its own. She's set up and ready for the long road of recovery ahead of her. From what I can tell that road is approximately 10 months long. We're hoping that she can regain her physical strength and ditch the trach and the feeding tube overtime because she is a young and vibrant lady after all. She has been through a great deal of trauma, but she is a fighter, and she is ready to do whatever it takes to get back on her feet and enjoy life with everyone that she loves.

We're asking for financial support for the essentials while she recovers. I think that she may qualify for disability and other types of support, but we expect there to be a gap and she's already exhausted her savings account.