12.13.19
/ Clients

Asia and Her Grandchildren Don’t Have to Worry over the Holidays

By Emmett Findley, Director of Communications

At 57, our client Asia is living a life she loves, filled with advocacy work and the daily care of her grandchildren. She takes great care in being a leader in her community, and a source of love and support for her grandkids. She’s happy and energized by her life, and grateful with how God’s Love We Deliver has helped her get there.

Asia loved school, especially science. After high school she went in to nursing with a focus on phlebotomy. But at age 24, everything she’d been working towards stopped. Asia was diagnosed with HIV. Due to stigma and discrimination at the time, she was forced to leave the nursing field she so loved. So Asia went immediately in to advocacy for people living with HIV/AIDS. She joined the City’s prevention Planning Council and ACT-UP.

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Asia managed on her own for a few years after her diagnosis, but then she received another devastating diagnosis: she had Lou Gehrig’s disease. She could no longer take part in the dancing she so loved. Living with the symptoms of HIV and ALS was too much to handle. That’s when a doctor referred her to God’s Love. At the time, she was just 60 pounds as a woman in her late 20s. She could not walk and her hands didn’t work. She could not eat and was taking 18 pills a day.

“If I didn’t have God’s Love, I would have no other options. There was such a long time when I couldn’t do anything for myself, let alone my family, that God’s Love truly made all the difference for me.”

Immediately, God’s Love began sending her meals. At the beginning, she received pureed meals because she had difficulty chewing and swallowing. In the years since, Asia has seen the God’s Love program and menu change. She has gained the weight she so desperately needed when she began on our program. Since she’s had continual access to our Registered Dietitian Nutritionists, Asia tells us she’s learned how to eat more nutritiously, and she’s able to share her knowledge with her grandchildren, who now live with her and receive God’s Love meals, too.

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Asia’s grandkids – Summer, age 9, Joseph, age 8, and Amira, age 7 – all love the healthy breakfasts they receive from God’s Love, especially the fruitcups and oatmeal.

“It’s a relief,” says Asia. “I’m so glad I can send them off to school having had a healthy breakfast at home prepared by God’s Love. I know my grandkids are happy and I hope they’ll always decide to eat healthily the way God’s Love provides for them. It’s a good feeling when I unpack the delivery bags and see their breakfasts and dinners. I know they’ll be taken care of, and so will I. I look forward to every delivery – there’s the comfort of knowing that it will be good, healthy food. There are times when I don’t have the energy to shop or cook and knowing there’s meals for me and my family in the freezer takes such a load off my mind.”

Asia’s HIV and ALS are managed better thanks to the meals she receives from God’s Love. She takes her medicines regularly with meals, when required, which helps support her immune system and maintain viral load suppression.

Today, Asia fills her time with her advocacy work and caring for her grandchildren. They love Thanksgiving and birthdays at home for all the usual reasons, but especially because of the special Thanksgiving feasts God’s Love provides, and the personalized birthday cakes they receive from Chuck the Baker. Asia tells us,

“God’s Love has improved the quality of my life. When I couldn’t do for myself, I knew I had someone rooting for me who understood my needs. God’s Love didn’t give up on me.”

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#ALS #childrens' meals #client spotlight #HIV #Lou Gehrig's disease #medically tailored meals #Staten Island

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