And once Elliot recovered — and he did recover, fully, which the walls also showed, in a photo of him healthy and laughing that made my father do a double-take — I took everything I’d learned and I built something.
The Elliot Project started as me, in this apartment, helping one other family navigate the same disease Elliot had. Just one. A patient with no family, drowning in the same gaps I’d pulled Elliot out of.
Then two families. Then ten.
Then a small grant, because it turned out hospitals had been desperate for exactly this — someone to coordinate care for the patients who fell through the cracks — and no one had built it.
Then a bigger grant.
Then a partnership with the very medical school I’d dropped out of, who wanted to study our patient outcomes, because they were dramatically better than the standard of care.
