Danny Gilbert—Jordan “Joey” Gilbert

Danny Gilbert—Jordan “Joey” Gilbert describes a father-daughter relationship shaped by Joey Gilbert’s opioid addiction, attempts to obtain treatment, and death. Danny’s testimony records both her transition to buprenorphine and the practical barriers surrounding care: she was uninsured, and he searched prescription prices pharmacy by pharmacy. His account makes the relationship visible through the work of trying to keep treatment within reach, and through the family’s later account of her death.

Treatment and access to care

Joey eventually transitioned to buprenorphine, a treatment detail recorded through an interview with her father. The evidence does not specify when the transition occurred or how long she remained on the medication, but it places Danny among the family members documenting her changing course of care.

Joey was uninsured and applied to a hospital-run clinic. To manage the cost of prescriptions, Danny used GoodRx.com to compare prices at pharmacies in town each week. The search was ongoing rather than a one-time calculation: the most affordable pharmacy could change from one prescription to the next. His account thus connects parental care to the everyday work of navigating treatment costs when insurance is absent.

The account also records Danny’s objection to requiring a person with addiction to be clean before receiving help. His position emphasizes access to treatment during addiction, rather than making prior abstinence a condition for care. In the context of Joey’s treatment history, that objection gives his account a broader significance: it challenges a threshold that can exclude the very people seeking help.

Death and its aftermath

Danny and other members of the family later provided an account of Joey’s death and its cause. The available evidence does not detail those circumstances, but it places Danny’s testimony within the family’s effort to record what happened. Joey’s obituary described her as having fought against addiction, presenting her life in terms of struggle rather than reducing it to a clinical history.

After Joey’s death, Carilion Clinic wrote off more than $10,000 in her bills as charity care. The account links an immediate financial burden to the aftermath of her death: charges that had remained part of the family’s experience of care were ultimately handled as charity. Danny’s role in the record therefore extends beyond seeking treatment and managing medication costs; he also supplied information about the medical and financial consequences left behind.

Narrative significance

The relationship is documented chiefly through Danny’s interviews and the family’s account, not through an extended scene between father and daughter. Those fragments establish a concrete pattern: Joey’s treatment changed, access remained financially precarious, and Danny took on the work of comparing prescription prices and explaining the family’s experience. The account resists treating treatment access as an abstract question by locating it in the choices and constraints surrounding one uninsured patient.

The record also places practical care beside public descriptions of addiction. Joey’s obituary framed her as someone who fought addiction, while Danny’s reported objection to abstinence as a precondition for help points toward treatment during that struggle. Together, these details make the father-daughter relationship part of the book’s larger account of how families encounter gaps in addiction care, without implying that Danny’s efforts could control Joey’s outcome.