Help Hope Live for Hydie Wyatt

My name is Hydie Wyatt and I am a forty-three-year-old single mother of a twenty-four-year-old and a seventeen-year-old. My youngest son is about to graduate high school with honors and move onto college in the Fall of 2025. I have a genetic lung condition called aplpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency which went undiagnosed until the age of thirty-six and mistaken for asthma my whole life. My first memory was being in an ambulance because I couldn’t breathe. At thirty-four I was diagnosed with emphysema which eventually led to my real diagnosis. I was put on oxygen shortly after my true diagnosis. My grandmother, mother, and father were all diagnosed with emphysema.  One of my sons also has my condition. Since my lungs were so compromised, I contracted a necrotizing pneumonia in 2023. I had to be intubated, eventually trached, and placed in a medical coma for two weeks. I spent the next two and a half months after that relearning how to breathe on my own, eat and speak with the trach valve. Eventually I was strong enough to have the trach removed and go home. I’m now on SSDI permanent disability and receive $1,079.00 a month as my income. We are on section 8 housing and rely on food stamps. Before that I was a caregiver for the elderly and people with dementia. I was even awarded care giver of the year in 2019. I loved my job and the people I cared for, having to stop working was a huge blow to my life and my heart.

I have been working with Stanford Lung Transplant Team for two years now to get ready to be put on the transplant list. I am now at the last stage before being listed. I need to lose some weight before surgery as well as arrange family and friends who are willing to live with me in Palo Alto across the street from the hospital for three months after I am discharged post-transplant. Not only do I have to maintain my normal expenses and obligations I have to pay for, the housing in Palo Alto, which is $15/day, meals for both me and my caregivers during that time, the cost of gas for my son to come visit (1.5 hour drive), medication, home modifications, accessible transportation, rehabilitation, home health care, and my son’s needs while on a fixed income. I didn’t believe that medi-cal or medi-care would help pay for a transplant but they are. Stanford recommends that you have about $10,000 saved for this entire process which is impossible for me to do on my limited income. I am grateful for this opportunity and have done everything in my power to comply with all of Stanford’s requirements for transplant and my goal is finally in sight. Me and my children would be extremely grateful for any help extended to us during this process.