Last summer, life changed forever for a Billings family when volunteers built them a beautiful new house with the help of Extreme Makeover Home Edition.
You may recall the Carter family was selected for the show because of Julie Carter's efforts to help people suffering from an unusual medical condition called chiari malformation.
Montana's News Station visited with Julie about how life has changed and about the new opportunities the show created to help chiari sufferers.
Talk about an extreme change - one day your family is living in a house that was once a chicken coop. Just a week later, you're in a brand new, beautifully furnished home built by hundreds of volunteers you've never even met. Then your story is told on national television. For Julie Carter, the experience was amazing, awesome and overwhelming. "There were just so many things happening all at once, it was shocking," says Julie Carter.
In the months after construction wrapped up and before the Extreme Makeover Home Edition episode aired, privacy was hard to come by at the Carters' new home. "Until the show aired, no one could take a picture inside the new house. If someone did take a picture, and it happened to land on the internet, we would be fined $100,000. So we lived in here with the shades pulled and paper on the windows," says Carter, "We would look out the window and there would be people in the front yard with cameras and binoculars."
For many years, Julie felt like she and her daughters were all alone in their battle against chiari malformation, a condition that happens when brain tissue pushes into the spinal canal causing painful headaches, numbness and dizziness. But since the show aired last October, chiari sufferers have flooded her inbox with emails and thousands have visited the website she set up to help them.
"I was so overwhelmed from when I was first watching the show with the Junkerts and the volunteer crowd. I came home and checked my email and went 'uhhhhhhh' and started getting in a panic--thinking I can never answer all these. It was a trip," says Carter, "I'm still counting emails and trying to get a handle on the influx. Within the first ten hours, we got almost 400 emails. Within 40 hours, it was about 700 emails. I was used to getting 20 a day"
Now, she's able to reach out to chiari sufferers from her new home office. The surroundings may be new, but her mission remains the same: to help them get diagnosed early and accurately.
"I'm bawling for them every day. As fast as technology and research are evolving, they can't move fast enough at this point. It's an exciting and terrifying journey. "
The show turned the Carters' lives upside down for a time but things have settled down a bit. She still struggles to believe how blessed she is and how many volunteers reached out to help build a new future for her family.
Carter says, "Still eight months later, we go into a store and somebody says 'I put in your ceiling', and I say "you did? What was it like?" It's a total stranger and you have this connection because they gave up their time and energy. They gave so much and they didn't even know us."
These days Julie Carter loves wandering around her new home.
This Sunday, April 6, 2008, Extreme Makeover Home Edition will re-air the episode featuring their inspiring story.
Click below to view additional stories about the Carter family:
Billings family's Extreme Makeover episode hits national TV
Billings Extreme Home Makeover house work continues
Extreme Makeover recipients get more support from Billings community
WEB EXCLUSIVE: 2005 story on Jade Carter who's home is being redone by TV show
Click below to view additional videos about the Carter family:
RAW VIDEO: Crews work on Day 2 of Billings Extreme Makeover
RAW INTERVIEW: TV show designers discuss Billings Extreme Makeover
WEB EXCLUSIVE: 2005 video on Jade Carter; who's home is being redone by TV show
