The GoFundMe campaign to assist Irish dancer Kieran Joran continues to grow, with 389 donations totaling more than $32,000 in little over five weeks. Donations may be made online at this address: https://www.gofundme.com/kieran-jordan039s-healing-fund

In an update posted in mid-June, Kieran expressed her great thanks:

KIERAN JORDAN- I wanted to say hello and thank you to all the recent donors. I can't believe the ongoing support from both friends and strangers. This is a huge relief and help to us right now, and Vincent and I are both humbled with gratitude.

I am about 6 weeks into treatment now. I have had a few good days, and plenty of not-so-good ones. But I've had a few victories too ... like I made it to the Y and swam for 15 minutes last week. I would not have had the strength or wellness to do that even a couple weeks ago. I actually taught my dance classes last night too. That was a bit of a stretch. But I survived. It was fabulous to see my students and do what I love, but I definitely didn't feel too well as the night went on.

I'm not trying to push or overdo it, but I am trying to LIVE a little, even while enduring the ongoing nausea, listlessness, and fatigue. The fatigue is unreal. It's not like being tired in a normal way. It's like being crushed under a mountain or something. So I am still mostly staying close to home and doing what work I can on the laptop, to set up a few classes at my studio, do the household stuff that I can, and take my non-stop regimen of meds, herbs, and supplements.

Yesterday I was quite struck by something in the news. The students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School performing at the Tony Awards. They sang "Seasons of Love" from the musical "Rent." The lyrics ask, "How do you measure a year?"

Since I got sick last July, I have continuously described this year as a nightmare. That's how it has felt. Like a surreal, twisted, bad dream of doctors appointments, anxiety, isolation, depression, sleepless nights, horrible physical sensations, insurance companies, deductibles, blood tests, bills, conflicting opinions, Lyme blogs and so on. It has felt like a "lost" year from my life.

But the song lyrics say, "How do you measure a year? Measure it in love." In thinking about what those students saw — their classmates and best friends being murdered in front of them in school — and thinking about the nightmares that they and their families are living through this year, I just thought, wow. There's courage. There's grit. There's acceptance and an open heart, from each one of them. To stand up on stage in front of all the luminaries of Broadway and sing your heart out, measuring a year like that, not in horror, but in love.

So. Okay, then. We've got this, this Lyme thing. This being out of work thing. This being isolated and scared thing. This nausea and not sleeping thing. In regards to the Go Fund Me donations, Vincent recently said, "the money is incredible. But it's the love that really matters."

THANK YOU ALL, for both.

Enjoy the kids — my guides.
Kieran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=srkj63VBSHM