Photo Credit: David Palmer

Jeff Walls (third from left) with Guadalcanal Diary in 1982.

For weeks, decades-long Athens musician, Marietta native, walking encyclopedia and friend Jeff Walls (Guadalcanal Diary, Hillbilly Frankenstein, The Woggles) has been suffering from what we now know is an exceedingly rare condition.

Walls was admitted to the hospital with a variety of serious but confounding symptoms. After multiple rounds of attempted diagnoses, it was determined by doctors at Emory University Hospital that his condition is a rare form of pulmonary hypertension called PVOD, or pulmonary veno-occlusive disease.

It is reported that this is so rare, it affects approximately no more than two people per 10 million. There is no known cure or treatment, and the only option going forward is a double lung transplant, which would, most likely, need to be followed by a heart transplant.

While Walls and family are still deep in the process of making some very serious decisions, the bills have been piling up, and will likely continue to for some time. His Guadalcanal Diary bandmate Murray Attaway established a fundraiser that quickly met its initial goal of $15,000—by all accounts a rather arbitrary initial number. Because the total cost is unforeseen and completely unpredictable, the goal has been raised.

Please consider donating whatever you can to support a true tower of song. For more information, see gofundme.com/jeff-walls-medical-fund.