“Something started bothering me mentally. I also became physically ill,” she told Healthline.
When her husband left her several years later, Darley’s problems snowballed. Her mental and physical illness, later diagnosed as depression, fibromyalgia, and chronic fatigue syndrome, led her to miss work. She was eventually fired from her job. With no job, she could no longer make her mortgage payments.
In 2003, she took her son to a relative’s house and went to a homeless shelter for what she thought would be a few months. She was homeless for seven years.
While homeless, Darley made repeated trips to the emergency room seeking help and a diagnosis for her symptoms.
“You don’t get the right kind of care,” she said. “It would be this look of condescension. Sometimes I didn’t go.”