Help Tanna Mayo During Her Health Crisis

Tanna Mayo is one of my best friends. I have known her for more than 20 years. She is very ill, suffering from extreme pain, basically immobile and confined to her house. She is one of the kindest, most caring and generous people I have ever had the chance to meet and she needs our help. It’s heartbreaking to see her in this condition. In the past she loved spending time with family and friends, maintaining her house and enjoying her hobbies, especially cooking and showering her beloved Bichon’s with love and affection. I am organizing this Go Fund Me campaign, hoping to help her as she copes with her many different illnesses. The stress of the financial crisis caused by her failing health is only making the whole situation worse.

Her health started to decline during Mid 2021, and then a fall down her basement stairs exacerbated the swelling and severe pain. She remarked to her friends and doctor that the pain felt like her ankles/ legs were stuck in a vise that was getting tighter and tighter every minute, her legs/ankles/feet were going numb as well and her gait and balance were off, she also started having muscle spasms and she couldn’t even squat down anymore or sleep in a bed, only in a chair and even then she rarely sleeps. She has had and continues to have many falls, since then and is currently in outpatient wound care and still is getting new wounds. She now also has bilateral neuropathy of her upper extremities (left worse than the right along with spasms). In April 2022, when she could no longer tolerate the ever increasing pain, she called an ambulance and went to the emergency room where doctors ran numerous tests and came up with a long list of health problems from which she was suffering. They include Stage 4 Liver Disease, ascites, edema, severe anemia and bilateral peripheral polyneuropathy of her legs/ankles/feet and hands coupled with severe Lumbar, Thoracic and Cervical issues. Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyradiculoneuropathy and CRPS and intercostal neuralgia and much more. She had no idea she was so ill. Treatments to alleviate her pain have failed, though she and her doctors keep trying to find solutions. She is going to many different specialists. She is homebound, only going out of the house for doctor’s appointments and treatments, with the assistance of friends.

Always highly motivated and a hard worker, she now finds herself unable to work at all. She has spent the last few years living off savings that she had, while trying to deal with her health issues, making countless visits to different doctors, undergoing dozens of tests and treatments, spending all of her time dealing with her health and coping with the disabilities it is causing.

She is basically immobile, suffering the indignities we won’t describe here, that come with her illnesses. Her body is covered in bruises and blisters, only one of many effects of the disease that is plaguing her. She relies on the kindness of a few close friends to assist her with the most basic needs. For someone as independent and self-reliant as she is, this is supremely difficult.

Meanwhile, doctors are still trying to come up with ways to better help her and she is still under numerous treatments.

Tanna has applied for disability benefits for a second time as she was denied on initial application and has an attorney. She is awaiting a decision on that. We hope she is approved, because it will help stabilize her life and her finances but we all know how long of a process that is. In the meantime, we are trying to help her cover medical bills/co pays and essential living expenses (insurance, mortgage, utilities, etc.), while enabling her to stay in her home. The goal is to ensure that Tanna can concentrate on improving her health and quality of life.

Please help Tanna, any help is greatly appreciated and will help her navigate through this incredibly difficult journey she is on. Please keep her in your prayers.

Thanks so very much and please share.

Marty Katz

* She will have to go back into the hospital very soon due to mounting concerns about her health/lab test etc. I will keep everyone updated as soon as possible...