Tom Intili's Funeral Fundraiser

Hi friends, family and strangers. Early on Wednesday morning, we lost my dad Tom Intili after a 25-year fight with early onset Parkinson’s Disease. The Parkinson’s eventually led to a spinal injury that paralyzed him five years ago. Last summer, he was additionally diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. We’re grateful that his suffering has ended and after many years of pain and insomnia, he can finally rest.

Unfortunately, my dad didn’t have life insurance and the last thing that Matt and I want my mom to worry about is finding the money for the funeral services. A significant portion of my mom’s income will also go away now that he’s passed and she won’t be receiving disability and social security benefits. I know many people loved him and want to help and I think the best way would be to give what you can, even $5, to my mom. My mom and my dad met when they were in their 20’s and he was diagnosed at age 40. She’s dedicated the majority of her life to taking care of him. Even when he was bed bound and dealing with multiple complicated health problems, she was his only full-time caretaker. Matt and I haven’t seen her leave this house for more than a few days at a time over the past five years so that she could be by his side. She’s a hero.

As someone with an incurable understudied neurological disease, my dad suffered many injustices at the hands of our health care system over the years and has never been compensated for that pain. In 2008, he participated in a clinical trial and underwent voluntary brain surgery hoping that some of his symptoms could be reversed and that he could dance at my wedding one day as he’d always say. He did this knowing that a small percentage of the volunteers would be placebo patients and have their heads opened up and then closed without surgery, to serve as a constant in the trial. My dad’s condition improved after surgery to the point that he no longer needed a wheelchair. A year later we learned that he didn’t have the real surgery and that his improvement was the effect of his own willpower alone. This type of sham surgery is now illegal. He spoke to a journalist about it in 2010. It’s hard to quantify the psychological pain that this caused but it was by far the worst thing that has ever happened to our family and my dad was still talking to me about it even the night before he died. He received incredible care from so many people over his life - particularly at St Barnabas where he went through cancer treatment over the past year and from his last aid Bunmi - but I’ve also watched multiple aids or nurses yell at or make fun of my dad for not being able to speak or move. His spinal injury was in part the result of maltreatment from an aid who left him on the floor for hours after he fell out of bed and injured his back. We’ve never been compensated for any of this and while there’s no amount of money that could make it okay, this would be a nice time to not have to worry about finances.

We appreciate anything you can give. Please know my dad was laughing and smiling until the very end. He loved every person he ever met and I know he’d love those of you he didn’t get to know. Thank you.