in 2017, I lost my daughter.

I don’t have good words for what that did to me. The years after were a blur of depression so heavy that the basic maintenance of being a person stopped happening. Meals. Sleep. Doctor’s appointments. Dentist appointments, especially. I wasn’t neglecting myself out of carelessness.. I simply couldn’t reach myself. Grief took everything I had, and what it didn’t take, it hollowed out.

I’m in a better place now. I’ve done the work to get here. But my body kept the receipts for those years, and now the bill has come due.

My dental crowns have failed. I have severe infections and I live in constant pain.. the kind that wakes me up at night, makes eating a calculation instead of a pleasure, and sits in the background of every conversation I have. My dentist has told me I need surgery, and soon.

I’ll be honest with you: asking for this is humiliating. I’ve spent years hiding my mouth when I laugh. Turning my head in photos. Talking with my hand half over my face. Keeping quiet in rooms where I used to be loud. Writing this out for people to read is one of the harder things I’ve done, and I’ve rewritten it more times than I want to admit.

But I’ve run out of other options. And somewhere in the rewriting I decided that being embarrassed for a little while is better than being in pain for the rest of my life.

What I’m asking for isn’t cosmetic. It’s the ability to eat a meal without bracing for it. To stop cycling through infections. To look someone in the eye while I talk to them instead of studying the floor. To be a whole person in a room again.

About the extra

If this campaign raises more than my surgery requires, every dollar beyond what’s needed will go to the Vaida Paige Memorial Fund, which supports students pursuing careers in nursing and pediatric medicine. I will not keep a single penny. If something good can come out of the worst thing that ever happened to me, I want it to be that.

Any amount helps — $5, $20, whatever’s easy and doesn’t hurt.
 

Thank you for reading this far. Truly