On Friday, Cynthia Tisdale went to work as a substitute teacher at Santa Fe High School, one of the two jobs she worked in order to pay for her husband’s idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis treatment. IPF is a terminal illness that gives its sufferers only up to five years to live; Tisdale was raising money so her husband, William, could get stem cell treatments that might prolong his life. All of this has come to light because on Friday, Tisdale was one of ten people killed in a high school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. In the days since, as the media profiled the victims, reporters came across a GoFundMe page started by the family to help pay for William’s mounting medical bills.
The GoFundMe “story,” authored by one of the couple’s children, reads:
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The end stage symptoms are chest pain, depression, reduced lung function, disturbed sleep patterns, and becoming housebound. “Pulmonary Fibrosis is a disease marked by scarring in the lungs. Tissue deep in the lungs become thick, stiff and scarred. The scarring is called fibrosis. As the lung tissue becomes scarred it interferes with a persons ability to breathe.”
The Tisdales’ story—which combines high medical bills, an economic situation that forced someone to take multiple jobs, and gun violence—touched on multiple fault lines in American life, a fact pointed out by writer (and VICE contributor) Sean Collins on Twitter:
But what’s even darker than the GoFundMe is the fact that Tisdale’s death likely spurred the publicity that funded her husband’s treatment. According to the GoFundMe page, William Tisdale’s doctor denied him a lung transplant in December 2017, telling him he had 12 to 18 months to live. The page was set up on March 29. A month ago, the family was struggling to raise $12,000 for the stem cell treatment—an update noted they had brought in just $1,065.
But in the hours and days after the shooting, with Tisdale and the GoFundMe page appearing in news stories and on social media, money has rushed in. As of Monday morning, the page has exceeded its goal, raising over $45,000. “We are still in such disbelief that anything good can come out of such a horrific event,” reads a statement on the the GoFundMe page. The statement continues:
We don’t know how to put it all into words but thank you doesn’t give it enough justification. With that said we raised the goal for funeral costs, bills, and possible lung transplant with second dr that we never thought was an option financially or because of receiving a no the first time…he is very blessed and after we start to find our new normalcy somewhat we will sit down and get the stem cell treatment hes been waiting and hoping and praying for thank you all again so very much!
This “heartwarming example of people’s generosity” is also an indictment of America’s healthcare system, which is so broken that people with serious medical conditions routinely have to beg for money from strangers on the internet; only those with viral stories are saved. The depressing, absurd twist is that the family has gone viral for an entirely separate tragedy.
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