Affordable housing shortage blocks efforts by terminally ill Bridgeport mom to die at home
The longtime Bridgeport health care worker has been diagnosed with an advanced aortic dissection, an often-terminal heart condition involving a tear in the aortic wall. Doctors have given Aisha only a few months to live.
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Aisha Sewell, 47, says she's not asking for a lot this Christmas - just the chance to die at home.
As News 12 first reported last year, the longtime Bridgeport health care worker has an advanced aortic dissection - a condition involving a tear in the heart. Sewell has already lived longer than the five months doctors predicted she would a year ago, but now she says the end is near.
"I've been in a nursing home for over a year now, and I don't want to die here. I want to be in my own place, surrounded by my family and friends and all the comforts of home," Sewell said Thursday.
Charlie Griggs is with Building Neighborhood Together, a Bridgeport nonprofit whose mission is to build and provide affordable housing.
He says Sewell's story is all too familiar.
"Aisha's case is absolutely heartbreaking - but, tragically, she's not alone. Due to the severe shortage of affordable housing, people who need it are having a very hard time getting it," Briggs said.
Sewell says she was forced to pay the $9,000 she raised through her original GoFundMe campaign to the nursing home in order to qualify for ongoing Medicare benefits.
"Doing that allowed me to keep on receiving care here," Sewell said.
