TAMPA, Fla. — It would be easy to lose hope in the situation Michelle Mastrototaro and her son, Bryce, are in right now. It’s as hopeless as it is horrible.
Bryce, 16, is sleeping in a Pack ‘n Play meant for a baby.
His mom is sleeping on an air mattress just feet away.
“I get so emotional when I think about him,” Michelle said through tears. “I’ve devoted my whole life to him.”
There’s nothing she wouldn’t do for her son. She’s loved and cared for him in a way few parents would understand.
Bryce is autistic and blind.
“He just wants to be home,” Michelle said with tears in her eyes. “I just want to be home too.”
Their Port Tampa house had never flooded before in its entire 111 year history until Hurricane Helene.
“I was not prepared. It just keep creeping and creeping — it was almost like the water just came so fast,” Michelle recalled. “6.77 feet.”
Now, Michelle, her husband, and their children, including Bryce, are crammed into a small room upstairs from their flooded home.
Most of Bryce’s toys and belongings, along with his mom’s furniture, are piled at the curb.
What’s left inside their house is in bad shape too, including Bryce’s specialized safety bed.
“I’ve been crying. It’s just — it’s very sad,” Michelle said. “He’s in a Pack ‘n Play, because there’s no room. There’s no room to cook. It’s very small.”
And it gets worse. Michelle and her husband had no flood insurance.
“It’s put me in a spot where, do I go, do I stay, do I not allow this to defeat me?” Michelle said. “I don’t know what to do. I honestly don’t know.”
But a mother‘s love knows no bounds, so she’s playing the hand she’s been dealt by Mother Nature.
Each day, when she’s not at work and Bryce is not at school, she’s helping her blind, autistic son up and down stairs to his hopefully temporary Pack ‘n Play and living quarters.
“I give him toys, you know, and he’s just happy. But, he keeps asking, ‘I want to go home.’ And I can’t give him that answer,” she said.
There are no easy answers, but there is still hope.
Of all the possessions Bryce and his mom lost in the flooding, they found one item completely dry and unscathed: a hat embroidered with three words.
God Got Me.
“I put it on my mailbox,” Michelle said, her voice full of emotion. “I put it on my mailbox, and I said, ‘God, please take over, because I can’t do it.’”
According to Michelle, Medicaid has approved a new safety bed for Bryce. Right now, though, they don’t have a home in which to put it.
The family has started a GoFundMe page to help ease their current financial uncertainty. You can find the fundraiser at this link.
