I am interested in everyones comments and help. I am a 40 year old woman, who for the last 3 years has been battling with an extremely rare auto-immune disease which is mainly attacking my lungs, but also causing severe migraines and blood clots, and we all seem to wonder what next. It is now early December and this year I have had 8 severe bouts of pneumonia which put me in hospital. The Respiratory Physician has started washing my lungs out the last couple of times, and he gets about 80ml of pus out of the washings. Yuck!

I live with my husband and 3 children. A daughter (14), son (9), and daughter (5). My migraines and general health is so bad that I am unable to reliably supervise the younger childen, therefore we need to have a nanny. I certainly am not able to drive the care anymore. The amount of painkillers I am on is scary.

My problem is that I find it difficult to walk up the stairs, especially carrying something. I would have a better quality of life if we had a lift installed in our house. The cost of a lift is $50 000AU I have no concept how you go about raising such a huge amount. We have of course looked into the other options – move house, the stair lifters you stand on. Ultimately I will need to be in a wheelchair so it makes sense to put in a lift now. We feel that the children have so much stress in their lives dealing with a sick mother, to deal with a house move and school move is just something they can do without. All the houses in our area would require a life. The other thing that needs consideration is my husband needs to be close to his work, and it is mainly old houses close to his work, all requiring lifts,

I have extensively looked into whether we are elegible for any government support. Unfortunately ….. no. To make our tale even happier, last year our house was flooded with 2 feet of water, plus sewerage. The State Government was doing a road building project, and the people that they had got to do the building had built a metre high dam wall to protect their stuff … hence flooding our house. Of course, no one will actually admit it is as simple as this though. And as we don’t have thousands of dollars to sue, they get away with it scott free. But in the mean time, we have had to move out of it while it is being fixed. So we pay rent and a mortage, drive a very long way to get our kids to school, and have to pay to get the house fixed.

So we would like to try and raise money to put a lift in. Possible or not? What do you think? Your comments would be appreciated.

Carolyn

I know the beneficiary has to declare the gifts as income. But if, for example, I collected the money so that I could pay the expenses for the event and then gave the remainder to my friend, would I also have to declare that money as income because it was in my care for a little while, even though I wouldn’t be keeping any of it?

Obviously the nonprofit partner would be far preferable; I’m just wondering how people handle it when they don’t have one.

Thank you!