Nicole Armond : The Family No System Was Built For

Long before homelessness and medical instability entered her life, Nicole was known for helping others rise:

• Educational Impact: Tutored students as a college freshman and served on the Martin House Learning Center’s Board of Directors focused on educational and community improvement in Trenton, New Jersey.

• Business Mentorship: Mentored local entrepreneurs and financially supported small businesses to build up her community.

• Cultural Connection: Traveled abroad to Kiev and Odessa, Ukraine as an exchange student at just fifteen, expanding her lifelong passion for language and culture. She returned home eager to share what she had learned, helping others develop a deeper appreciation for cultural diversity, global perspectives, and human connection.

• Published Author: Used her talent as a writer and communicator to encourage, inspire, and uplift others through the written word, publishing her first body of work, “One Step from Behind, One Foot toward Enlightenment,” at 28 years old.

Today, that same woman is navigating homelessness, severe neurological impairment, and the enormous responsibility of raising three children, including a medically vulnerable infant, entirely alone.

What Happened?

Over time, progressive neurological symptoms, TBI complications, environmental housing concerns, and mounting medical instability gradually disrupted her ability to function independently.

• 2022: Forced to stop operating her business due to sudden illness, losing her income and relying heavily on outside support to keep her children safe.

• Housing Failure: Unresolved structural and environmental concerns inside the family’s housing created severe instability. Fragmented agencies failed to provide a meaningful resolution.

• Prolonged Crisis: The family entered a prolonged period of homelessness stretching across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York in search of shelter placements and reliable physical supports.

• The Systemic Barrier: Nicole navigated pregnancy, childbirth, newborn medical emergencies, and progressive physical decline while trying to prevent her children from entering foster care. Standardized systems repeatedly attempted to fit them into models that did not account for their medical complexity.

The Raw Reality of Medical Fragility

Nicole’s brain and body no longer function consistently enough for her to safely survive without stable external support. She lives with multiple progressive neurological and physical impairments affecting:

• Awareness and executive functioning

• Sensory processing and visual stability

• Mobility and memory

• Temperature regulation and communication

She experiences awareness lapses, neurological shutdowns, severe visual dysfunction, and sensory disruptions that can affect her ability to safely navigate daily life. Due to traumatic brain injury, brain tumor, encephalopathic features, intracranial pressure disorder, cervical cord Syringomyelia, mixed sensory-motor nerve dysfunction, and documented nerve damage, her brain and body do not always process information, sensations, or physical signals reliably. She also experiences temperature dysregulation, which can lead to dangerous episodes of intense cold sensitivity, numbness, and temporary loss of mobility in her lower limbs. This burden extends beyond her own wellbeing and affects how she perceives and responds to environmental conditions for her children, including her infant son whose temperature must be closely monitored due to sickle cell disease.

Nicole’s neurological and nerve-related impairments can also affect her ability to recognize danger signals within her own body. At times, pain, illness, infection, sensory changes, or medical deterioration are not fully recognized until symptoms become severe, physically disabling, or when someone else notices unusual behavior that Nicole herself is unable to recognize. This creates significant safety risks, particularly because she remains solely responsible for the care and supervision of her children without consistent adult support.

Why Traditional Systems Fail

Because Nicole outwardly appears articulate, calm, and capable, her invisible neurological impairment is frequently misunderstood or minimized. Systems expect rapid, efficient coordination and strict timing from someone whose condition severely impairs execution and awareness.

• Shelters: Both congregate and private systems Nicole and her family have resided in require compliance with rigid rules and a certain independence that do not account for fluctuating neurological capacity, visual disturbances, severe sensory overload, temperature dysregulation, and awareness lapses. Additionally, standard shelters expose Nicole to severe environmental hazards that trigger life impacting allergic reactions—making safe, medically stable lodging a critical medical necessity.

• Multiple treating specialists have documented that Nicole’s conditions affect vision, cognition, mobility, environmental tolerance, temperature regulation, and overall safety, creating barriers that standard environments have not been able to address. These overlapping impairments influence nearly every aspect of daily life, from navigating physical spaces and recognizing medical emergencies to maintaining continuity of care and safely caring for her children. As a result, every traditional support system has struggled to accommodate the level of medical and functional complexity her family faces.

The Impact on the Children

The children have endured prolonged instability across multiple states, shelters, and medical emergencies. Because Nicole is the sole caregiver, there are no reliable adults consistently stepping in to absorb those moments when her body or brain temporarily shuts down. Over time, the children have adapted in ways children should never have to:

• Monitoring changes in their mother’s condition.

• Redirecting her attention during neurological lapses.

• Repeatedly calling her name when she becomes “absent.”

• Carrying an emotional burden far beyond their years.

Why Immediate Support Matters

For Nicole, support means more than financial assistance. It means creating enough stability to safely parent, access medical care, respond to emergencies, and interrupt a cycle of ongoing harm. Nicole and her children are seeking medically appropriate stability, safety, and continuity of care. Support raised through Help Hope Live will directly provide:

1. Medically Safer Temporary Lodging: Private, climate-controlled, ground-level hotel accommodations. A controlled indoor environment allows Nicole to regulate dangerous temperature fluctuations that directly impact her mobility. A 24-hour staffed environment also ensures safety during severe episodes or physical emergencies.

2. Trusted Caregiving & Personal Support Assistance: Safer lodging will allow trusted personal support aides to assist Nicole when medical crises arise, ensuring her children remain protected. Currently, Nicole frequently delays or avoids urgently needed emergency medical care because she has no backup physical support to watch her children.

3. Reliable Transportation Access: Because Nicole has been diagnosed with a seizure disorder that currently prohibits her from driving, and because Modivcare’s mileage restrictions prevent transportation to many of her specialty medical providers, access to reliable transportation has become a critical need. Funding will help ensure uninterrupted access to essential medical care, specialty appointments, diagnostic testing, and treatment located beyond Modivcare’s limited transportation boundaries.

Nicole and her family are not asking for luxury. They are asking for:

• The chance to stabilize

• Safe access to medical care

• An environment that stops physical harm

• A childhood free of adult burdens

Intervention cannot wait until complete collapse. With your support through Help Hope Live, Nicole and her children can move closer toward medically safer living conditions, continuity of healthcare, dependable transportation, protective caregiving support, and the possibility of rebuilding stability after years of surviving in crisis.