Help One of Our Own: Carolyn Wood

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Published in Community

One of the nicest people we’ve ever known and worked with is in a desperate fight to survive. Many of you remember her—she is a gifted, passionate, and tireless worker who has never sought the spotlight and has never asked anything for herself.

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Carolyn Wood spent three brilliant years at A List Apart, creating the position of acquisitions editor and bringing in articles that most of us in the web industry consider essential reading—not to mention more than 100 others that are equally vital to what we do today. Writers loved her. Since 1999, she has also worked on great web projects like DigitalWeb, The Manual, and Codex: The Journal of Typography.

Think about it. What would the web look like if she hadn’t been a force behind articles like these:

Three years ago, Carolyn was confined to a wheelchair. Then it got worse. From the YouCaring page:

This April, after a week-long illness, she developed acute injuries to the tendons in her feet and the nerves in her right hand and arm. She couldn’t get out of her wheelchair, even to go to the bathroom. At the hospital, they discovered Carolyn had acute kidney failure. After a month in a hospital and a care facility she has bounced back from the kidney failure, but she cannot take painkillers to help her hands and feet.

Carolyn cannot stand or walk or dress herself or take a shower. She is dependent on a lift, manned by two people, to transfer her. Without it she cannot leave her bed.

She’s now warehoused in a home that does not provide therapy—and her insurance does not cover the cost. Her bills are skyrocketing. (She even pays rent on her bed for $200 a month!)

Perhaps worst of all—yes, this gets worse—is that her husband has leukemia. He’s dealing with his own intense pain and fatigue and side effects from twice-monthly infusions. They are each other’s only support, and have been living apart since April. They have no income other than his disability, and are burning through their life savings.

This is absolutely a crisis situation. We’re pulling the community together to help Carolyn—doing anything we possibly can. Her bills are truly staggering. She has no way to cover basic life expenses, much less raise the huge sums required to get the physical and occupational therapy she needs to be independent again.

Please help by donating anything you can, and by sharing Carolyn’s support page with anyone in your network who is compassionate and will listen.

5 Reader Comments

  1. I shared https://www.facebook.com/richard.fink/posts/10209752050147586
    and added this:
    Carolyn Wood was my main contact and source of feedback when I wrote a couple of articles about web typography for A List Apart six years ago. She’s a delightful person who loves the web deeply. Carolyn is one of those people who always give more than they ask in return. I post this in the hope that some of my FB friends will help out, too.

  5. information about that is very helpful for me who is studying deeper .. keep working , Harga Ac Terbaru – thanks to quality article , if you need information about more try visiting

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