Support Tess in Her Health Battle

My name is Sarah and I'm fundraising for a friend who is experiencing long-term medical distress. Tess is a young woman who grew up on a farm and has since spent most of her life serving others. The day I met Tess was the day that my three-year-old fell off the back of a chair and needed to get stitches. We were serving as missionaries overseas, and as I answered the door to welcome Tess to our apartment, I heard a crash and crying from the other room. I ended up rushing my daughter to the hospital to get stitches, while Tess stayed with my other children who she had never met, in a country she was unfamiliar with and handled everything with common sense and care.

I have now known Tess for 12 years and she has always been an extremely hard worker who has tackled anything she’s asked to do. After meeting us, Tess served as a missionary overseas in several hard to access countries but had to return home due to the collapse of her physical health. Tess has since been diagnosed with several chronic conditions including Leukoencephalopathy (an often-fatal brain disease), Gene Mutations (causing the malabsorption of nutrients), Hashimoto’s (a life-threatening thyroid disease), POTS (A circulatory disorder that causes unpredictable fainting). What this means is that Tess is not able to work and spends most of her days sick and managing to care for her physical needs only with drastic modifications to her lifestyle. Even short visits and online tasks leave her exhausted and needing to spend days in recovery.

After a long 2 year application process, Tess was recently denied disability, as are 70% of all applicants, and is at risk of losing food and medical help due to work requirements that she physically cannot meet. I am running this GoFundMe provide Tess with $7,000, which is 3 months of living expenses. All donations will go straight to her bank account. No donation is too small! Please send this to others in your network.