"No beauty shines brighter than that of a good heart."

Dear friends and family,

In January, I was diagnosed with a heart condition called Supraventricular Tachycardia (aka SVT).

SVT is an arrhythmia caused by an electrical misfire in the heart that makes it suddenly beat very fast (for me about 150 BPM). When I was younger, these episodes were brief and would resolve on their own, but they have gotten progressively worse and can now only be stopped by a trip to the Emergency Room where they "re-start" my heart chemically using a drug called Adenosine. As you can imagine this has made living a normal life difficult, and the episodes of SVT are now quite scary, stressful, and expensive.

The good news is that there is a heart surgery to correct SVT, called Ablation. It is 95% successful at curing SVT, and it is common and straightforward. And of course, it costs some money. I have decent health insurance, but I will still be responsible for 20% of the total cost.

Since David and I moved to Roseville last year, I have continued to work part-time as an interpreter and translator, supplementing my $600 per month income with money saved during my seven years teaching first grade. With my savings nearly gone, I started to look for work in our local area in December but had to stop because of the unpredictability of my SVT. I hope to resume my job search in March, but until then money is very tight.

David has been a wonderfully supportive caretaker but the stress of caring for me, Rusty, and working full-time to meet nearly all of our financial needs for the last two months has been hard on him too.

And so, I am reaching out to you to ask for your help with the cost of this surgery. Please consider donating if you have the ability and desire to do so. I will be using all funds donated to pay my medical bills for the surgery and the cost of trips to the ER. And I will be forever grateful!

My goal is to raise funds before the Ablation procedure on February 28th.

If you would like to reach out to me and check in, I would love to hear from you by text or email. I am taking things super easy right now to try and avoid another episode before the surgery, so I may take a while to respond.

Thank you for reading and for being my wonderful friends and family!

I love you with all my heart, even the malfunctioning part (which I hope will be fixed soon!)