aipforum

Hi everyone....
My mom is now on the transplant list for a lung transplant. Her operation, hospitalization and medication are all covered by insurance, so that isn't a problem. The hospital cleared her financially.

What is a problem is the living expenses pre-transplant and post-transplant. Since we live outside the allowed distance from the hospital, we've had to pack up and make a temporary move to Houston. We need to keep our apt in Corpus and live in temporary housing in Houston. As you might expect, this is costly for 2 people that have Social Security as their sole income.

We have no other choice but to live in Houston, and as you all know, it could be months before she receives the operation. And the hospital requires her to be within 1 hour of the transplant center for 3-9 months after the operation.

The social and financial worker tell us call on family and friends to help pay all these living and personal expenses not covered by insurance. We don't have any other family, they've unfortunately passed. And our friends simply don't have the money to help beyond small little amounts in the range of $20-30. That's how we've survived this so far.

So now we're left with fundraising.
How do we begin?
What have all of you done?

We have to come up with some income very fast through fundraising, or we will be forced to move back to Corpus (and that would kick mom out of the transplant program).

We have an URGENT mess on our hands, and we just don't know where to start.

We have managed to get a company call Magcloud to publish a cookbook/magazine for us free of charge. And we've got it ready to go. Mom will receive all the proceeds from this, so that would be a great help. But we aren't marketing people, and we have no idea how to get this magazine advertised. Does anyone have ideas as to how we can do it?

Mom's social worker and financial worker are of no help whatsoever. When asked for suggestions, they gave us lots of wrong information. And in fact, we had done so much research about getting help that we knew more than they did.

It's gotten to the point now that we either have to get help, do fundraising, or give up and go home.

This is a desperate situation with no easy answers.

Since most of you have gone through something like this, I'm hoping to pick your brains. We need quick help in the worst way.

Thanks.
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

-- Brent
-- Caregiver

Here's what we have going so far:
[url]www.lungsforbarbara.com[/url]