Help Wendy's Road To Recovery
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A year ago Wendy was on top of the world. This beautiful, kind, athletic, and vibrant woman from Santa Monica, CA, had boundless energy and style along with her gift for helping women feel good about themselves at all ages and all sizes.
She felt grateful for her friends, her active lifestyle, her longstanding career as a stylist at Elyse Walker, and the rekindling of a significant relationship. She was HAPPY.
However, around the same time last year, Wendy started experiencing mysterious symptoms that were impacting her health. She looked great on the outside, but she didn't know a chronic illness was progressively getting worse inside her body.
One day, Wendy was driving her car and she suddenly blacked out. She made it home safely, but it was a terrifying experience.
Then, one year ago today, on October 24, 2017, Wendy suffered a significant head injury at home. She lost consciousness and fell head first onto her bathroom floor.
Wendy's neighbor rushed her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a severe concussion. With the notoriously problematic nature of concussions, doctors told her that recovery could take anywhere from months to years.
What Wendy didn’t know at the time was that her body was also shutting down due to hidden toxic mold in her home and that the concussion was only one small piece of a bigger puzzle.
Shortly after her fall, Wendy experienced escalating anxiety, short-term memory loss, and every thought and action started to feel like a massive chore. The one who used to run circles around her colleagues was struggling to get through each day.
Wendy could barely drive, she was exhausted, and she couldn’t seem to get better. The fatigue was debilitating and the viruses seemed constant. She could no longer exercise. That wasn’t even a remote possibility. Occasional attempts left her feeling even worse for days. Wendy found herself contracting chronic fevers, walking pneumonia, blurred vision, and heart arrhythmia, severe insomnia, and the list goes on.
The weight of constant illness and fatigue reduced her life to barely limping through her work weeks, and “resting” in bed on her days off. The toll on her psyche, her demeanor, her relationship, and her work started to show. By New Year’s Eve, her relationship had ended. Her life was shrinking.
Depression was lurking, but Wendy didn’t yet know it. In April 2018, after missing her annual work retreat in Mexico and then a close friend's wedding in May, Wendy thought "what if there is something in my environment that is making me sick? Why can't I get well?
She hired an environmental hygienist to test her apartment for mold. The reports came back showing highly elevated levels of toxic mold inside Wendy's walls with the highest concentration behind the headboard of her bed. All that “resting” was making Wendy sicker and sicker.
At first, Wendy's landlord denied there was toxic mold in her apartment despite the lab results and clear signs of long-term water intrusion inside her apartment and thoughout the building's exterior walls. Wendy felt helpless.
She reached out to Santa Monica's Rent Control Board and Building & Safety Code Enforcement. Upon Inspection, her apartment was deemeed uninhabitable and Wendy's landlord was required to immediately move her out of her apartment to a temporarly location.
Seven months later, Wendy is still not back in her apartment. It is unknown at this time if she will ever be able to move back in, or if she will need to move elsewhere.
Diagnosed with biotoxin illness, Wendy’s path to recovery has been a long, winding, and exasperating road. She is still suffering from the effects of long-term mold exposure, post-concussion syndrome in addition to severe symptoms of anxiety and depression that commonly accompany these illnesses.
She is working diligently with her doctors toward rehabilitation. However, one year later, she’s still struggling to regain the normalcy of her previously dynamic life.
Of all the many obstacles confronting Wendy, the out-of-pocket expenses for her care are daunting. She has already incurred over $25K in costs that are not covered by her health insurance, and another $20K is needed NOW to continue her treatment.
Worries about this crushing $45K are threatening Wendy’s recovery. She has exhausted her savings, is incurring credit card debt rapidly, and is selling her jewelry, handbags, shoes, and clothes to pay for her medical care.
However, she should be concerned about one thing: getting well. We’ve created this Go Fund Me page to help her focus on her care, and not the overwhelming medical costs of her recovery.
Thank you so much for your support and love. Wendy also thanks you for your powerful prayers and positive energy. There’s no doubt she needs all the love you can share. Knowing loving friends surround her helps her every day. We’re all blessed to be in Wendy’s community of caring.
We'll use this page to stay in contact and keep you updated on her progress and:
HOW YOU CAN HELP TODAY
1. Please GIVE what you can. No donation is too small. All donations are tax-deductible, and all money goes to Wendy's medical costs.
Any excess money once all bills are paid will be donated to other GoFundMe campaigns by Wendy as her way of paying it forward and saying an emphatic thank you as well.
2. SHARE this story on social media, such as Facebook, using the buttons at the top of this page.
3. E-MAIL or TEXT the link to this story to your friends, family, and colleagues: https://www.gofundme.com/we-love-you-wendy-goldsmith
Thank you,
Stephanie Van de Motter & Shelton Wilder
She felt grateful for her friends, her active lifestyle, her longstanding career as a stylist at Elyse Walker, and the rekindling of a significant relationship. She was HAPPY.
However, around the same time last year, Wendy started experiencing mysterious symptoms that were impacting her health. She looked great on the outside, but she didn't know a chronic illness was progressively getting worse inside her body.
One day, Wendy was driving her car and she suddenly blacked out. She made it home safely, but it was a terrifying experience.
Then, one year ago today, on October 24, 2017, Wendy suffered a significant head injury at home. She lost consciousness and fell head first onto her bathroom floor.
Wendy's neighbor rushed her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with a severe concussion. With the notoriously problematic nature of concussions, doctors told her that recovery could take anywhere from months to years.
What Wendy didn’t know at the time was that her body was also shutting down due to hidden toxic mold in her home and that the concussion was only one small piece of a bigger puzzle.
Shortly after her fall, Wendy experienced escalating anxiety, short-term memory loss, and every thought and action started to feel like a massive chore. The one who used to run circles around her colleagues was struggling to get through each day.
Wendy could barely drive, she was exhausted, and she couldn’t seem to get better. The fatigue was debilitating and the viruses seemed constant. She could no longer exercise. That wasn’t even a remote possibility. Occasional attempts left her feeling even worse for days. Wendy found herself contracting chronic fevers, walking pneumonia, blurred vision, and heart arrhythmia, severe insomnia, and the list goes on.
The weight of constant illness and fatigue reduced her life to barely limping through her work weeks, and “resting” in bed on her days off. The toll on her psyche, her demeanor, her relationship, and her work started to show. By New Year’s Eve, her relationship had ended. Her life was shrinking.
Depression was lurking, but Wendy didn’t yet know it. In April 2018, after missing her annual work retreat in Mexico and then a close friend's wedding in May, Wendy thought "what if there is something in my environment that is making me sick? Why can't I get well?
She hired an environmental hygienist to test her apartment for mold. The reports came back showing highly elevated levels of toxic mold inside Wendy's walls with the highest concentration behind the headboard of her bed. All that “resting” was making Wendy sicker and sicker.
At first, Wendy's landlord denied there was toxic mold in her apartment despite the lab results and clear signs of long-term water intrusion inside her apartment and thoughout the building's exterior walls. Wendy felt helpless.
She reached out to Santa Monica's Rent Control Board and Building & Safety Code Enforcement. Upon Inspection, her apartment was deemeed uninhabitable and Wendy's landlord was required to immediately move her out of her apartment to a temporarly location.
Seven months later, Wendy is still not back in her apartment. It is unknown at this time if she will ever be able to move back in, or if she will need to move elsewhere.
Diagnosed with biotoxin illness, Wendy’s path to recovery has been a long, winding, and exasperating road. She is still suffering from the effects of long-term mold exposure, post-concussion syndrome in addition to severe symptoms of anxiety and depression that commonly accompany these illnesses.
She is working diligently with her doctors toward rehabilitation. However, one year later, she’s still struggling to regain the normalcy of her previously dynamic life.
Of all the many obstacles confronting Wendy, the out-of-pocket expenses for her care are daunting. She has already incurred over $25K in costs that are not covered by her health insurance, and another $20K is needed NOW to continue her treatment.
Worries about this crushing $45K are threatening Wendy’s recovery. She has exhausted her savings, is incurring credit card debt rapidly, and is selling her jewelry, handbags, shoes, and clothes to pay for her medical care.
However, she should be concerned about one thing: getting well. We’ve created this Go Fund Me page to help her focus on her care, and not the overwhelming medical costs of her recovery.
Thank you so much for your support and love. Wendy also thanks you for your powerful prayers and positive energy. There’s no doubt she needs all the love you can share. Knowing loving friends surround her helps her every day. We’re all blessed to be in Wendy’s community of caring.
We'll use this page to stay in contact and keep you updated on her progress and:
HOW YOU CAN HELP TODAY
1. Please GIVE what you can. No donation is too small. All donations are tax-deductible, and all money goes to Wendy's medical costs.
Any excess money once all bills are paid will be donated to other GoFundMe campaigns by Wendy as her way of paying it forward and saying an emphatic thank you as well.
2. SHARE this story on social media, such as Facebook, using the buttons at the top of this page.
3. E-MAIL or TEXT the link to this story to your friends, family, and colleagues: https://www.gofundme.com/we-love-you-wendy-goldsmith
Thank you,
Stephanie Van de Motter & Shelton Wilder
Fundraising team: We Love Wendy Goldsmith (2)
Stephanie Smith
Organizer
Santa Monica, CA
Wendy Goldsmith
Beneficiary
Wendy Goldsmith
Team member
