A good cause

I had a friend who passed this link onto me. Rebecca Fortune is suffering from gastroparesis, which is where the stomach muscles do not work (they are literally paralysed) and so the food doesn't get digested. Since there is nowhere for new food to go, a patient with this condition will throw up when they eat again. This causes massive weight loss and will eventually cause death in extreme cases. For an in-depth explanation, please check this out.

Unfortunately, Rebecca has a very extreme case. She is also under the double-whammy of not having medical insurance. I personally don't have medical insurance, and sometimes I lay awake at night, petrified that something like this is going to happen to me. She needs to pay $30,000 for a surgery, and this will only happen through donations that you and I make. I am poor (no lottery winnings yet!) and therefore was only able to donate $5. I know it isn't much, but $5 is more than she had before. She lives here in the United States, but the gal who is collecting the donations for her lives in England, so the exchange rate is roughly 1 US dollar to .50 Pounds. All donations are accepted via PayPal, and PayPal will do the exchange for you, at no charge to you. It will ask you to donate in Pounds and then PayPal does the exchange, so if you donate $2.50 in Pounds, you are donating $5 in US dollars. I hope that made sense.

I am not one to usually go online and talk about causes this way, and I don't imagine that I'll ever do another blog like this. It isn't in me to ask for money, even if it is for other people. But something about this just struck my heart. Food and eating and dining out at restaurants is a huge given in most people's lives. Rebecca cannot enjoy any of that. She has been forced to stop eating, causing her to lose an extremely unhealthy amount of weight. There are probably people who look at her and think she is bulimic or that this is her choice. I cannot imagine trying to live with this condition. She cannot enjoy simple pleasures like eating chocolate or munching on an apple. She is literally being slowly starved to death. I cannot imagine how hard that has got to be to live with.

So, my generous readers, if you have a couple of dollars to spare, please send it Rebecca's way. And send some prayers heavenward--in the end, we've got to trust that God will work this out.

Havs