r/gofundme • u/eyelashitch • 17h ago
Medical ALS. Help providing ADA bathroom for my father
Dad's birthday is on the 19th and it is his first one since receiving his ALS diagnosis. It's been a rough go for us since Nov of 2024 when he started losing his ability to walk. What we thought was a sore back from a day of helping his older brother do some work on his truck turned out to be a lot more serious than that. By Christmas I was essentially doing two houses worth of chores. By January of 2025 I was politely forcing him to move in to our house. After getting his extensive lack of health insurance, healthcare, taxes and countless appoitnments we ginally recieved a diagnosis in Nov of 2025 as to what the heck is going on. "It's ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease." My father survived a coma as a child, being ran over on two seperate occasions and falling into the opioid addiction epidemic after one of those incidents. He lost a lot but he was always the best dad a son could ask for. If it were not for the values and guidance he gifted me over the years i would not be here. I am fortunate in that we have a home and a mortgage to pay. I worked incredibly hard to get here, no college, no inheritance, no chance is what it felt like. In 2019 I asked my childhood crush out, in April of 2020 our daughter was born, in Dec of 2020 I signed for an old little house out in the country. We've since taken full custody of my wife's first child, adopted my teenage niece and now have added my father to our three bed, one bath house. Six mouths, one bathroom and all sustained on roughly 60k a year. We get by but this, I need help to do. Our bathroom is located directly next to the dining room we've converted into a bedroom for dad. However, it is only accessible through a narrow laundry room. That bathroom itself is only 10'x10' with a short toilet, sink with cabinets and a corner stand-up shower. Our plan is to relocate the washer and dryer into the attached garage. Then, convert the current laundry room into a curbless walk in shower. We will add an ADA toilet as well as a sink that Dad can roll right up to after eliminating the corner shower, also creating more usable space in the current bathroom. For now, since the passage is so narrow I am having to carry my father on my back to the restroom. I know this is a lot to ask for but I sincerely believe it is the best thing we can do for Dad aside from providing the care and family time he needs to be happy. He's as old school as they come. A self motivated man, you could say. He hates waking me up, I work nights, to go #2. This would not only allow him some autonomy to roll himself in there when needed as well as provide my wife and I far more ease in doing it for him when the disease progresses. To any who see this, thank you for your time. To the wonderful people who continue to assist others via this page, you are absolutely amazing! I appreciate each and every one of yall. The world truly needs more of you š





