Hi everyone, this isn't Amber, it's Daniel posting on her behalf.
Amber arrived in Phoenix on the evening of Oct 26. Although she was excited, she wasn't feeling well so we went straight to the ER at Banner Desert Medical Center. They did tests and found that she had 2 very serious infections in both her blood and urine. Normally, her Portland doctors would just give her a pill and send her on her way but the Phoenix doctors took it more seriously and admitted her immediately.
By the next morning she had a temperature of 103 and her BP was over 180. She started coughing hard the next day and they said it was a bad case of Bronchitis. That wasn't enough of a welcome so that evening they added the flu to her growing list of ailments. The hospital kept her for 14 days and she got 3 rounds of IV antibiotics every day she was there and all sorts of other meds too. She also has to be on pill antibiotics for yet another 10 days. As you can guess, she was pretty miserable the whole time, and even more so because her floor did not have accessible showers so she got nothing but sponge baths the whole two weeks.
I've been at her side from 12 to 14 hours a day since the day she arrived and her friend Christina has come by often too. The hospital staff seemed to love me since I was doing most of their job the whole time. No complaints though. On a couple evenings I was able to take her outside to see the beautiful desert sunsets.
As of the evening of the Nov 9th, she is in a temporary group home until her disability services all get transferred. Even though I don't like the place, she is doing as she always does and is making friends with the residents and doing her best to cope with the changes. It's very scary to leave all you know and move to the desert. She is also bored because her Kindle broke and she's on the desolate end of the valley right now.
Yesterday and today we finally went out for a few hours and I bought her some sunglasses.
The hardest part is her clothing situation. Her clothes are for Portland weather, not Phoenix weather. Although they meant well, the people who packed up her clothes packed up the wrong stuff. Almost all of it is dark and thick, which is not good with it's 90 outside like it was today. She only has one pair of shorts. Our version of really cold is their version of a heat wave. She needs new clothes.
The rest of this is from me and she did not ask me to say it: If you can afford to send her some help (cash) via PayPal, now would be a good time to do it. I've done what I can to help, like fronting the money for her rent, a hospital bed, personal care supplies, medications, a cell phone while working on all her legal paperwork, an unlimited phone card and other stuff, but now I need help with the help. If you can help, click on her PayPal Donate link on the left side of this page and spare whatever you can. You don't need to be a PayPal member to donate. On the donate page, there is a iine that reads something like "Don't have a PayPal account?" and you can click there to use your credit or debit card. Thank you! For those who have helped out in the past, she truly appreciates it.