Help Me Build a Bridge to a Sustainable Future
Most people meet me as a Realtor, a horse farm owner, or someone building a thriving fountain pen community. They see the life I’ve built, but they don’t know how many times I’ve had to rebuild it, because chronic illness has repeatedly changed its shape.
It started while I was working as a therapist, running an equine psychotherapy program for at-risk youth in New Hampshire. I was exposed to ticks every day, and it left me carrying several tick-borne infections without knowing it: Lyme disease, Babesia, Bartonella, Ehrlichiosis, and more, undiagnosed for over a decade. I managed a slow decline for years, until a stretch of testing led me to pause my usual protocol, and within a month and a half I went from managing okay to barely able to walk. What followed was disability appeals spanning eight years, all denied, even after my attorney called my file the thickest she’d ever handled, exploratory brain surgery, a week at the NIH hospital, and more than a dozen diagnoses trying to explain one root cause.
Through it all, I’ve kept looking for the next foothold, believing that if I could just find enough stability, I could build again.
These days I can reliably eat five foods, and I will never take a normal day for granted again. My most recent diagnosis, Systemic Mastocytosis, finally has a treatment that’s genuinely helping. But staying stable depends on a protocol I built carefully with my naturopath, specific medications, supplements, and weekly IV treatment that my body has finally learned to tolerate. Every time I’ve tried to change or intensify it, something in me shuts down hard enough to send me backward. Staying the course, not chasing something new, is what’s keeping me upright.
Here’s what that stability costs each month:
- Supplements: $1,368
- Medication copays: $523
- Caregiver support (meals, meds, shopping, basic housework): $2,500
- Weekly IV treatment: $344
- CPAP copay: $20
- Appointment copays: $8
- Other ongoing treatments: $125
- Total: $4,888/month
For years, my parents helped me carry the financial burden of living with chronic illnesses and helped me to thrive despite it. A huge portion of that support is ending this year, before I’ve fully regained my footing. Even if I ultimately decide the farm and this chapter of my life need to change, I want that to be a choice I make on my own terms, not one forced on me because I ran out of time.
I’m not asking someone else to build my future. I believe I can do that. I’m asking for help building a bridge between where I am today and where I’m headed: $58,656, twelve months of coverage, so I don’t have to dismantle the life I’ve worked so hard to create before I have the chance to stand on my own again.
Real estate is another way to help, even if giving isn’t an option right now. I partner with trusted agents around the world, so if you, or anyone you know, friends, family, anyone, is buying or selling, commercial or residential, anywhere, a referral to me supports my business directly. And if you’re within about an hour of Asheville, I’d love to help you buy or sell your home myself.
If you’re able to give, thank you, truly. If you’re not, sharing this with someone who might be is its own kind of generosity. Either way, thank you for reading this far, and for caring enough to be here.
If you’d like to understand my story more fully, I’ve shared that here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e3WYzrRP2NVJcDhTiY5Ipyc-9fmr7bgh/view?usp=sharing