GoFundMe For Branford Man With Rare Disease

BRANFORD, CT —Suddenly, last summer something was very wrong.

William ‘Billy’ Twyford began experiencing agonizing pain in his feet and hands. Swollen and inflamed, they were going numb.

By October, he could not walk and his hands and fingers were becoming paralyzed. Twyford was at Yale New Haven Hospital for three weeks, his sister wrote on GoFundMe. He was diagnosed with the rare disease called cryoglobulinemic vasculitis where inflammation of the blood vessels can restrict blood flow and damage vital organs and tissues. In Twyford’s case, his hands, fingers, feet and toes.

In and out of YNHH over the course of many months, he is now hospitalized and has been since mid-April. His sister Aimee says some of his fingers will be amputated, and he’ll enter a rehabilitation facility “to learn to walk again.” That is, she said, “unless the doctors feel he is far too immunocompromised to be in a facility during this pandemic.”

Twyford is a master carpenter, a mixed-martial arts student and a guitarist for The Snapper Blues Band, all requiring use of his fingers and hands.

“This sudden illness is devastating,” his sister Aimee said on a GoFundMe page she has created to help cover his astoundingly high medical bills.

“The amputations of fingers from his right hand are very painful, and there is a very high chance that he will lose some from his right hand,” she said. “The nerves in his feet have been seriously damaged, making walking or even putting on shoes excruciating. It is so, so terrible for us to see him so thin and beat down.”

Aimee Tywford says “everyone” knows her brother and knows him for his generosity and wit. Originally from North Branford, he graduated from Branford High School.

“Billy has helped so many people in his day-to-day life. He has taken people into his home, and given money to those in need,” she said. “Some people light up a room with a smile, my brother lit up a room by doing a fake trip, followed by a flip, and then he’d land on his feet, his arms out, and a smile.”

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