A Gillette mom believes this summer and early fall likely represents the last chance she’ll have to make memories with her daughter who is battling a life-ending condition.
Plans for road trips that would allow Londen Tabor and her daughter Autumn, 20, to drive the Badlands, camp in the Black Hills, go rock hounding across the state, and travel to North Carolina to see family in their 2000 Chevy Suburban are on hold because the SUV's transmission just died.
“I was driving along and thought, ‘Are you kidding me,'” Tabor said when the vehicle broke down. “The Suburban is completely out now, and it just feels like the world is against me.”
If the transmission hadn't failed, a short camping trip using the Suburban in May to an agate festival in Montana revealed that the heat, space, and mosquitos — coupled with her daughter being in the last stage of juvenile Huntington’s disease — meant taking the Suburban across the country was not going to work.
Tabor, 43, hasn’t given up on making that last road trip happen and is raising money to rent a van.
Autumn was diagnosed with the disease in 2018 at age 12, which also is the same year that her father, Justin Fender, died from the same condition at age 36.
Tabor and Fender never married and had broken up in 2008, but Tabor said he moved to the Gillette area to be near their children, Autumn and her brother Logan. Her oldest son, Dakota, also considered him as his dad.
Tabor married her husband Chris in 2014, and he adopted Autumn.
Seeing the disease that took Fender now gripping her only daughter “breaks my heart,” Tabor said.
Chris, Autumn and Londen Tabor enjoy a Wyoming day outdoors. Chris has adopted Autumn. She lost her dad to Huntington’s disease. (Londen Tabor Photo) 
Autumn Tabor was diagnosed with Junior Huntington’s Disease at age 12. The disease progresses five times faster in young people than adults. (Londen Tabor Photo) 
Londen and Autumn Tabor hope to have one more summer of memories this year. (Londen Tabor Photo) 
Autumn and Londen Tabor enjoying a past summer memory. (Londen Tabor Photo)
Disease’s Impact
The website for the Huntington’s Disease Society of America says the disease affects brain cells, resulting in changes in personality, coordination, behavior, speech, or the ability to learn, according to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America.
Tabor has witnessed all of that in Autumn.
Tabor said her daughter went from being a cheerleader in her freshman and sophomore years of high school to a measured decline that has brought her to a place today where she is totally dependent on Tabor for care.
Young people with the disease typically decline five times faster than adults, she said.
“It’s crazy, because you go from 2018 and then 2019 and 2020, and there are these little changes,” she said. "Up until about 2021, she could still ride a bike.
"Then we got her a three-wheel bike, but it was only a year that she was able to ride it.”
A few years ago, Tabor started a TikTok account with Autumn that was meant to share their journey with the disease and educate others. Over the years, they’ve gathered 160,000 followers.
The mother and daughter in 2023 turned a journey that included a Huntington’s Disease Association event into a 6,280-mile trip from Wyoming to Arkansas, Tennessee, the Carolinas and a stop at the White House.
They made the trip in Tabor’s small Kia Soul, stayed in hotels, and made a couple of media appearances.
But to use the Kia now would be much more difficult.
Tabor needs to transfer Autumn in and out of the vehicle and put her wheelchair in it.
Tabor said sometimes it’s hard to look back on her TikTok posts because they show the rapid progression of Autumn’s disease.
But the social media platform has also forged new relationships they never would have had before.
During their 2023 trip, Autumn and her mom visited and stayed with an Arkansas woman who they had connected with over the social media platform. They hope to visit her again this year.
@londenandautumn Trying to find the light through all the darkness. :broken_heart: #JuvenileHuntingtonsDisease #HuntingtonsDisease #jhdawareness #jhdwarrior #huntingtonsdiseaseawareness:blue_heart::purple_heart: ♬ Light of the Soul - SANTANA J.L.M
The Agenda
Tabor’s initial plans were to go on a rockhounding trip across Wyoming on their way to Salt Lake City for the National Youth Alliance’s juvenile Huntington’s disease retreat later this month.
She’s bought tickets for a Benson Boone concert in Casper in early September. Her daughter is a big fan.
Later in September, the plan called for a monthlong road trip to the East Coast to visit her sons and Autumn’s brothers in North Carolina, Tabor’s family in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a stop at the Omaha zoo in Nebraska, and the drive to Arkansas.
“This is like the last chance I have to do this with my daughter,” Tabor said. “I just want a couple of months with my daughter (where) I don’t have to worry and I have a climate-controlled vehicle that I could pull over and feed her.”
In the meantime, Autumn’s decline continues. Now, she's finding it harder to swallow.
Tabor said the decision to launch the GoFundMe effort to rent a camping van from late this month through October for the trips was difficult.
She did not want to have to ask for help from others, but it seemed like the only viable solution.
“I know what this disease does. I know how fast it progresses,” she said. “I know where we are at, and it’s not looking good.”
The trips are not about a “luxury vacation” on wheels, but an attempt to provide a safe environment and allow her daughter to “get out there and live life to the fullest while she still can,” Tabor wrote in her GoFundMe post.
She appreciates those who have already responded, which as of Saturday is at $3,327 of a $9,000 goal.
Tabor, who for a couple of years experienced her own health issues and had to leave a position taking care of finances at a dental clinic, stays home and looks after Autumn.
Her daughter goes to a “day-hab” a few days a week with others who have disabilities, she said.
The hardest thing for Tabor remains thinking back to Autumn’s “normal years” before the diagnosis and having to watch her transformation under the disease.
“I don’t know what’s worse, just having something you have to face your whole life or to have this beautiful, amazing child, and then all of a sudden have her just start to be ripped away from you,” Tabor said. “To be ripped away slowly and slowly until there is nothing left and to know what she could have had.”
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
