T-shirt art by Well Dressed Mess Art, find her on Facebook. 

Friends, I think we can all agree 2020 is not what we expected.  For any of us.  For our family, it started with a bad meal that led to the loss of all our household processions. Emily has dealt with health issues for most of her life, mostly seen through reactions to foods, chronic pain, chronic infections, and anxiety. On New Year's Eve 2019, Emily ate a meal that was promised to be allergy friendly, but wasn't.  It caused her to have a massive mast cell reaction and set her into full blown mast cell activation syndrome.  This led to the rapid loss of food, medicine, chemicals, and the ability to be around them in the air.  For her, MCAS can be some or all of the following: rash, hives, itching, burning to the point of sores in her mouth, nausea, vomiting for days, uncontrollable crying, or irrational thoughts.  She has seen many, many doctors in her life, both allopathic and holistic, and set out to do the same this time.   

Along the way, she received the diagnosis of MCAS, hEDS, chronic Lyme, chronic mono, and a myriad of other things.  She kept getting sicker, lost the ability to eat or be around more things, became more anxious, and had multiple doctors tell her there was nothing they could do.  It has come to the point where she can only eat duck eggs, organic ground pork, distilled water, small amounts of salt, and lost the ability to take any medications.  We found a team of doctors that treat people with chronic illnesses, specializing in MCAS and EDS, with great success.  The cost is about $7,000 a week for treatment, travel, and stay, but we felt like God was asking us to say yes and trust Him to pave the way.  We did and He has cleared every roadblock possible. 

In late July, thanks to the help of our parents and so many friends, she spent 4 weeks and saw progress for the first time, especially in calming her mind and anxiety.  When she returned home, she quit being able to go into our finished basement without a mast cell reaction.  Earlier in the year, we had it professionally repaired after an overflow, but mold still found its way in.  It took over quickly.  Once all the testing was completed, we discovered we were going to have to throw away everything in the basement and anything porous upstairs.  Our insurance covers $15,000 of mold repair from the overflow, which will cover much of the remediation.  It will not cover any of the loss of our household goods unfortunately. 

Remediation is happening this week (18Nov) and we plan to get it ready and on the market as quickly as possible.  As a military family, our duty station changes often. That in addition to needing to save as much money as possible and keep the family as mold free as possible, we have elected to stay long term in a RV.  We have found that with the VOC's used in RV production, Emily has only been able to tolerate one brand, Grand Design.  We are in the process of purchasing one for delivery in late January or early February, hopefully closing on the sale of our house at the same time.   

Emily has spent 2 more weeks at different times this year under the care of her doctors.  She has seen great results and improves in many ways each trip. The Lord has provided the financing for it at each trip, we are so grateful. It has been beautiful to be loved through our friends and family, from people supporting Rivershore Wonders, to friends feeding our family, doing our laundry, sending money, and being there for whatever we need, God has cared for us through you. Her next trip is scheduled for the week of 18Jan and shortly after that we will (prayerfully) be closing on our house and moving into the RV where we will have to replace all clothing, beds and bedding, curriculum, and set up house.

We find ourselves in a real place of need, it's a hard place to be.  This project came through our own fight to surrender our plans and ideas to God, and know that many others have their own fights happening now. We hope this campaign will inspire hope for others who struggle, or for conversations to open up about what it means to fight to surrender. 

You can follow along in our journey here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/713252186133698/