HELP!!!

There I said it, actually I screamed it...We need help. 

My daughter Taylor Clark has been battling addiction for almost a third of her short 29 years.  As a family we have fought the battle with her. We have celebrated and cried over the recovery milestones and relapse cycles that often accompany opiate addiction.  Finally our only option on the table was the tough love approach. 

So - when I received that call ..The black fantasy became my reality. I answered with my heart in my stomach assuming the worst but learning Taylor was still alive however critically ill. “Your daughter is Very Very sick”

The words a blur - alive but very sick...multi system compromise, septic emboli to the brain, showered emboli throughout her body, infected heart valves, kidney failure - requires emergent dialysis they said - “will you consent?” they asked. After a heart palpating pause, “Do any and everything to save her”... All I could think of was save my beautiful girl that lives within the shell of an addict.

As a family we dropped everything and traveled to her bedside - obstructed by Covid restrictions I was the only one to see Taylor, to pray next to her, to advocate for her care. Seeing her so fragile, weak, unstable and unaware that her mother was weeping at her bedside, rummaging through a million thoughts of fear and despair, and the unimaginable decisions that might follow. Taylor laying in this condition unearths so much emotion, words cannot describe. We were preparing and thinking we may lose her to this nasty viscous disease.

Thing is - we didn’t lose her.  As the IV antibiotics, vasopressors, multi factorial care and dialysis cleansed her blood a spark of hope - ever so small - ignited inside her.  And she joined the fight for her life, physically and mentally living one day at a time. 

Sadly sobriety is an expensive path.  Which leads me back to HELP! Taylor’s road ahead will be long and arduous. She now requires weeks of IV antibiotics, aggressive physical therapy, Hemodialysis (kidney failure), and possible cardiac valve replacement surgery down the road. Taylor needs to be lifted up, through immense support. She has hit rock bottom. As a mother I am experiencing all of the parental emotions you can conjure up, but a mother’s love is a fierce and primitive force that trumps a child’s poor life choices.

It’s ironic that as a critical care nurse I help people all day long, but I have such a hard time asking others for help. This time, I NEED to ask for help. I’m both humbled and overwhelmed by the task at hand which is monumental on so many levels.

I am asking for any monetary donation you are comfortable with. No amount is too small.  We are only a few weeks into this nightmare, and already I am being swallowed up by the financial picture that includes travel expenses, health care, and layers of therapies.  

“It takes a village”.  I’ve heard that phrase countless times but it now holds personal meaning for me.  If this plea has made its way to you, you are somehow a part (directly or indirectly) of my village. As the world struggles with the stress of the Covid pandemic and social injustices, I’m allowing myself to ask for help from the masses to save one beautiful young woman full of potential that sadly fell victim to the epidemic that is opiate addiction. 

I humbly thank you in advance for taking the time to read this, and for any donation you can contribute.  If you are unable to contribute monetarily, I ask for your prayers

With gratitude,
Carolyn Mumford Clark, Madison Clark and Family


“Addiction is a DISEASE

Not a DISGRACE

No more shame. No more silence.” - Sandy Swenson