Saying goodbye to our dear friend Turt1ebyte

Hi, friends. I'm not sure how to start this. I've contacted many of you individually, but I knew I would need to make a wider announcement just due to the great number of people who will be impacted by this.

On Wednesday evening, April 30, our dear friend Turt1ebyte was taken to the hospital after he went into respiratory arrest. Some of you may have known he was in a wheelchair. He lived his life with muscular dystrophy. Despite the challenges he faced, he focused his time on shining his light on all of us. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Turtle had been telling us he had a low-grade fever, about 100.4° and had developed a cough. We urged him to get a covid test, which came back negative, but it was that evening that he stopped breathing and passed out. His family and then the EMTs performed CPR. Upon arrival at the hospital, he continued to be unresponsive and they diagnosed pneumonia. Though he may have had other symptoms a healthy person would’ve noticed, the combination of medications, machines, and pain he experienced on a daily basis could’ve caused these to go relatively unnoticed. The rest of the medical process probably isn’t relevant, but I’ve detailed some of the items above due to follow-up questions I’ve received from direct messages.

Despite best efforts, Turtle remained unresponsive. When they did tests of his brain function, they found minimal activity and the chances of him recovering were extremely slim. He has always communicated with his family that he wouldn’t want to be kept alive via life support, and they have started the process of saying goodbye. I have been in touch with his mother and other members of his family via phone and Discord. His family has been preparing for this day for most of his life and, despite their own grief, are extremely sympathetic to how sudden and unexpected this will be to his online family.

Turtle has not yet passed physically… but he is gone. I am devastated. Heart-broken. So many of us are. He and I were very close and I can easily say that there are few people, online or off, whose departure would impact me as much or more. He spent countless hours with all of us, gaming, working on his tech projects to better our streams, even just hanging out in Discord. Each night for the past several weeks he would be with us for hours, and in the rare case he was not, he would come in to say a quick goodnight before he went to bed.

I will miss my little buddy Turla so much. The way he said good morning to me in the Finch app every day, the daily ‘good nights’, his constant “aKtUaLlY “checking of the facts, the ‘proud mama bear’ moments I had every time he volunteered to play games with new people he didn’t even know… and crushed it. As of today, his AI bot still sits active in many of our chats. I don’t know how much longer he will be there, most likely until his family shuts down his PC, but it’s appropriate considering how much he has been there for all of us.

Every time I have spoken to his mother, she has found so much comfort in the true friendships he forged online - a world where his wheelchair didn’t matter and he was able to do everything he set his mind to. I’ve created a memory board so we can post our last words to him to send to his family so they can truly understand how he changed our lives. Feel free to also add to your post any stories / clips / videos / screenshots of your favorite experience with Turtle. https://www.kudoboard.com/boards/0XcODZP8

We’ve also launched a GoFundMe so we can provide some support to his family in this difficult time. There will be more details about a memorial celebration of life that I’ll be sure to share when his mother lets me know. https://gofund.me/bcef94eb

We love and we will miss you, Turla. May you enjoy an existence without illness, and know that you have touched the lives of so very many. You made the very most of this life, and I know you’ll do even more in the next.

- Corrin

P.S. If you are a streamer, please feel free to copy and save the image posted below to use in your overlay. Many of us already are. It is a lime green awareness ribbon for muscular dystropy with Turt1ebyte’s logo.