A terminally ill Maryland woman has arrived in Maryland after hundreds of strangers donated more than $60,000 for her air ambulance from an Alaska hospital.
Nancy Greathouse, 71, and her husband, Paul, went to Alaska on a two-week cruise in April. On April 28, she suffered a respiratory crisis and was taken via medevac from the cruise ship to a hospital in Juneau.
She spent the next two months at an Anchorage hospital.
Greathouse has been diagnosed with terminal cancer, along with an autoimmune disease flare-up.
Greathouse wanted to live out her remaining days at home in Beltsville, Maryland, but doctors said she was not well enough to fly a commercial flight and her insurance wouldn't cover the medical evacuation flight.
"She didn't want to die in Alaska and she wanted to come home so we were gonna figure something out," Greathouse's son Daniel Kelley told News4.
Within days of her story being shared, hundreds of strangers donated more than $60,000 to a GoFundMe page Kelley created.
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"We just want to say thank you," Kelley told the Alaska Dispatch News. "I think it's amazing these people would take this on to help Mom."
A plane carrying Greathouse arrived at BWI just after 10 p.m. Wednesday.
Hours before her arrival, Kelley and his family took part in a prayer vigil for his mother at Grace Pointe Community Church of the Nazarene in Severn, Maryland.
"Over $55,000 in three days' time. Incredible," Pastor Bob Prescott said of the donations supporting Greathouse.
