Urgent Request: Short Term Housing Needed re Incoming Coler-Goldwater Patient

Yesterday both myself and fellow blogger Roosevelt Islander were sent messages requesting any assistance we could provide regarding an incoming patient, Nick Dupree, at Coler-Goldwater Hospital. The patient’s primary caregiver, his elderly mother, is accompanying him to NYC. The grandmother is in need of short term housing, about 7 days, until her son is fully aclimated into Coler-Goldwater. The full request for help is below.

For information regarding the patient and his story you can link to “Nick’s Crusade”, Nick’s Wikipedia user page, and a Comcast Xanga website he maintains.

I am writing on behalf of someone who will soon be living on Roosevelt Island. Nick Dupree will be a patient for long-term rehabilitation at the Goldwater campus of the Coler-Goldwater Hospital. This comes at the end of a long struggle to receive appropriate services, which has him leaving his state and traveling to New York. If you are interested, please feel free to read more about it at: http://www.nickscrusade.org

What I am trying to find out is if it is possible to find short-term accommodation on the island. Nick will arrive in in New York on August 28, and will be traveling with his mother, who will be staying for 7 days to help him transition at the hospital. While staff at Coler-Goldwater have been very accommodating so far, they cannot actually provide a place for her to stay. Since there is no hotel on the island, they recommend staying nearby in Manhattan or Queens. Ordinarily this would not be an issue, but his mother is in very poor health herself. She cannot walk more than a few blocks, and it would be very difficult for her to navigate the subways or buses.

My goal, as a friend, patient representative, and New Yorker, is to try and find a way for her to stay within walking distance of the hospital, perhaps with someone who is living on the island. I'm in a position to collect funds to compensate someone who could provide that kind of accommodation.

Please let me know if there are any suggestions or leads I could try. I appreciate very much the time you've taken to read this e-mail. Please do not hesitate to reply to this message with any questions or comments; you're also welcome to contact me by
phone.

Sincerely,

Alejandra Ospina
email@superaleja.org

Thank you.