Someone was sanding a table in the corner. Someone else was painting trim with “oops paint.” Penny wasn’t painting that day. She can’t always lift her arms or stand long enough. But she was there, directing, encouraging, watching something new take shape.



“This is a team project,” she said. “I’m doing what I can. Some days that’s a lot. Some days it’s not getting out of bed.”

Her life wasn’t always measured in days like that. Before her body began sending signals no one could quite decipher, Penny was the kind of person who didn’t sit still. She swam, danced, hiked, picked blueberries, rode bikes, fished, and found any excuse to be outdoors. She was active at work, too, advancing her career to the role of chief accountant for the VA, earning a living she once never imagined possible.



Then came the symptoms. Strange swelling. Pain that didn’t match any obvious injury. Little knots under her skin that multiplied. Fatigue that no amount of rest could solve. Doctor after doctor told her it was soft tissue. Or stress. Or maybe in her head. Penny kept coming back because she knew they were wrong.



In 2018, her right knee buckled while she was walking outside and dropped her nearly twenty feet. She landed inches from a brick wall. “Something told me to land on my knees,” she said. She believed it was God. The fall didn’t explain everything, but it finally forced everyone to look harder.

The scans and specialists that followed uncovered the first answer: a rare condition called tenosynovial giant cell tumor, or TGCT. Most doctors see it as benign. Penny has the kind that behaves like it has a mind of its own, growing aggressively around the artery in her right leg and creating constant, grinding pain.



Then came the next diagnosis, and the next, until the list stretched longer than most people see in a lifetime. Dercum’s disease, with thousands of painful lipomas. Stage four non-alcoholic cirrhosis of the liver. Diabetes. Surgeries in the double digits. Procedures in the thirties. And now, a monthly flight from Virginia to Washington state for a clinical trial that might, if the stars align, give her some relief.



“Touch me, and I jump out of my skin,” she said. She meant it literally. Even the smallest pressure can feel electric. Some days she has enough energy to walk through the shop and plan the layout for the retail area. Other days, she lies still, waiting for the pain to settle enough so she can try again tomorrow.

Even with all of that, Penny has never been someone who quits. She raised four children on her own. Put herself through school. Finished her bachelor’s degree and then her master’s.



Maintained a 4.0 GPA while working toward a PhD until her health forced her to pause. She worked hard, made something of her career, and refused to sit quietly when she saw something wrong in the systems around her. Self-advocacy is a skill now, but it started as survival.

When her conditions forced her to retire, she suddenly faced a new problem. Her medication and supplies must stay refrigerated, and there were moments when she couldn’t afford the electric bill, or the outages were simply too frequent to trust.
 

She needed a backup plan. She needed something reliable. She went searching for help with the same persistence that carried her through decades of medical uncertainty. She built a spreadsheet. She reached out to thousands of organizations. And eventually she found Chive Charities.

Thanks to our donor family, Penny received a portable power station that will keep her medication and essential supplies safe when the electricity flickers, fails, or disappears altogether. It may not look dramatic sitting on the counter, but for her it’s a lifeline.



It means fewer nights staring at the refrigerator, wondering what happens if the power cuts out again. It means fewer calculations about which bill can wait. It means one small corner of her world is finally steady. The total impact was $2,650.

There’s also a full-circle note woven into Penny’s story. Back when Chive Charities first began, this community of do-gooders helped keep a rural EMS company in nearby Fluvanna from shutting down. If Penny ever needed emergency response, the very medics our donors helped keep on the road could be the ones showing up at her door today. In its own way, the help she received lands close to where our work in Virginia first began all those years ago.



When we asked her what she hoped people would take from her story, she didn’t hesitate. She wants patients to advocate for themselves. She wants doctors to listen. She wants people who feel dismissed or unseen to keep pushing for answers. She believes in faith, in persistence, in community, and in the power of one person refusing to give up on herself.



We’re proud to stand beside Penny as she builds a new chapter out of old furniture, recycled paint, and an astonishing amount of grit. If you’d like to help us support more people like her, we invite you to join our donor family and be part of our movement to make the world 10% happier. DONATE HERE.