Real Life Stories – 9th July

What would you do if you were allergic to water or if strangers paid you thousands of pounds to make potato salad? Find out what these people did when it happened to them with these real life stories!

This woman is allergic to water

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Barbara Ward isn’t like most mums. She can’t run around and play with her children. She can’t go out to eat at restaurants. She can’t even risk crying because she is so severely allergic to water. Her condition, called aquagenic urticarial, means that even a sip of water could cause her throat to close up.

She discovered her condition one day when she went into anaphylactic shock whilst taking a shower. Now, her husband is there to take care of the household chores and take the children on holiday, so her family can lead as normal a life as possible, but for Barbara, this condition means taking strong antihistamines daily. The Hartlepool resident also has to carry emergency allergy jabs with her everywhere she goes, in case she comes in contact with water. She can drink tea – if she takes tiny sips – and she has to do everything she can to avoid situations that might lead to her crying, as the tears could send her into shock.

Nurse inherited £27 million in cash and gifts from her patient

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It’s like a Hollywood tale: a Filipino nurse meets a woman who refuses to leave her hospital bed, and they slowly form a friendship. Soon, the nurse realises there’s more this recluse than meets the eye, after she begins showering her with gifts worth millions of pounds. It sounds too good to be true, but for agency nurse Hadassah Peri, it really happened.

She met Huguette Clark more than 20 years ago in the hospital where the woman went to be treated for cancer. Although she was healthy, Clark refused to leave her hospital room. Instead, she spent her time playing cards, watching The Smurfs and taking walks with Peri, and the two women became close. That is how Peri came to admit that her family, supported by her salary as a nurse and her husband’s as a taxi driver, was having financial difficulty. So Clark paid off the medical bills that was plaguing Peri’s family. Soon, Clark’s gifts got bigger, as she gave the nurse and her family a Stradivarius violin, a Cezanne painting, a Bentley (amongst other cars) and even a family retreat in New Jersey – all the gifts together were worth more than £18 million.

When Clark died, just two weeks before her 105th birthday, she left Peri another £8.75 million in her will. Clark’s family – whom she had never met – successfully contested the will, however, and Peri had to give back her inheritance and return another £3 million worth of gifts. That was just a fraction of the £172.5 million the 19 relatives were greedily snapping up, but Peri still gets to treasure her unique, long-lasting friendship. And the Bentley she never drives.

Kickstarter joker raises $8000 to make potato salad

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The internet is an amazing place, but sometimes it’s just silly, as Zack Danger Brown has found. He initially petitioned Kickstarter, the crowdfunding site, for $10 to make a potato salad, but as his internet fame grew, he realised he could turn his potato salad dream into a full-scale fantasy. So he changed his page, saying that if he hit $3000, he would rent out a hall and throw a potato salad party for the whole internet.

At the moment, he’s at $8,039 (about £4695) from 1,199 people – including 24 backers who paid $50 each! Best of all, he’s got nearly a month to go!

 

So what do you think about these amazing real life stories? Let us know in the comments!