Family care and Medical Bills

In January of this year, my husband and I found out that Kraig had a large mass on his liver.  We got it Biopsied to see if it was cancer and unfortunately 12 hours after his biopsy, he was bleeding a lot internally and had to spend a week in the hospital. 

After an angiogram and blood transfusions, the bleed was stopped, but this would only be a temporary fix. The mass was not cancerous, however it was a high risk of bleeding out again. It needed to be removed. 

In August, we got the medical leave needed with Kraig's job and on the 28th Kraig had surgery to have his mass removed.  He stayed in the hospital for 6 days and the 4th day Kraig was home, on the 7th of September, he was in a lot of pain most of the day. He kept complaining of sharp pain in his shoulder and said that he felt a lot of pressure in his stomach.

Later that night, the drain he had in his stomach filled with blood within an hour after we emptied it. He was bleeding massively and I rushed him to the emergency room. He had to have 15 units of Blood rapidly transfused into him and have an emergency Angiogram surgery to stop the bleeding.  However this only slowed it. it didn't stop it. He seemed stable and they took him off the respirator Saturday night. I came to the hospital Sunday to find his room filled with people and I was told to sign papers to allow procedures to save his life right now.  He was put back on the respirator, couldn't breath and unfortunately was still bleeding. Monday we did a 3rd Surgery since the 28th.  He had a lot of fluid in his body and because he was opened up so soon after his surgery it was hard to tell what exactly was going on. He couldn't be fully closed up due to all of the inflammation. That following Friday, they went in again a 4th time to clean out the rest of the fluid and while that was happening, an artery vein blew and they found the bile leak that probably started the journey to the emergency room.

I wish that was the end of it. However about a week later on September 17th I got a phone call at 5am that Kraig was massively bleeding and that I needed to come right away to the hospital and to bring other family. I was basically told that he was bleeding badly and they had already done 17 units of blood as well as additional bags of Plasma. He was in immense pain and they pulled him out of sedation so he could be ready to be put under for surgery. Everyone told me that the chances of him coming back were slim to none but everything would be done to save him. I told his surgeon and team that Kraig was way to stubborn to die and I stayed with him til they wheeled him off to surgery for the 5th time. They spent over 6 hours operating on Kraig. This time they finally removed the entire right lobe of his liver since nothing could be done at this point to keep it from bleeding out. I was a wreck and it was very difficult to stay calm for the kids. I don't think I have always been that. I have been so fortunate to have some amazing neighbors to help me out.

Kraig was thankfully able to be taken out of Sedation Friday on the 21st. He was stable enough to be allowed to wake up and finally talk to us. I was able to let the kids finally see their dad on the 22nd. Unfortunately he still had a bile leak. While the bleeding was finally taken care of his drain bags were filling up with Liver bile and his kidneys are still not functioning after the MANY times of massive blood loss. We decided to transfer him to a hospital about an hour away to do a procedure  to place in a couple of metal stints to hopefully fix the bile leaks so we can focus on getting him home. That was his 6th surgery. I wish I could say that it worked but the bile leak now seems to be even worse. We have had no choice now but to transfer Kraig to Tuscon Arizona to a university hospital leading in liver care and surgical treatments but  he is now almost 2 hours away from me.

 Unfortunately today is the 29th day now that he has been in the ICU.  He has had 5 operations since the original on the 28th of August making this a total of 6 surgeries. Tomorrow, had the original surgery gone successfully, would have been the first day he would have gone back to work.  We unfortunately have a lot of bills piling up, and we just got word today that he will need to have a 7th Operation to fix this issue. I will know more details on the next operation hopefully tomorrow.  Most likely we will have to do a complete reconstruction of the bile duct in his liver. This will be a complex operation and they will have to go back in for it. However 2 things need to happen. His kidneys, his doctors would like to see back to functioning, and Kraig needs time to heal. He has had 6 operations in a month and his body just can not tolerate much more abuse.

Chances are high that Kraig will probably be in the hospital for another week or 2 be sent home and then have this operation in 6 weeks time of today. Needless to say that SO many things can go wrong in between them with the bile leak however what I do know is it will be at least another 10 weeks before my husband can MAYBE go back to work.

I hate asking for help but my husband is not going to work anytime soon. Any help financially will be hugely appreciated. We moved here a little less than a year ago. I don't have any friends or family near me to help me out and trying to juggle the hospital and the kids has been very tough. Kraig's co-workers and my neighbors have been very helpful to jump over in times of emergencies and surgeries and let the kids stay with them when I needed to be there for Kraig

I would also like to ask  anyone reading this to please donate blood. Kraig, out of all of this has used about 70 units of blood and over 30 units of plasma. Donating blood DOES save lives. If it wasn't for that, he definitely would not still be with me today.

I will be posting up more details of everything that has happened on here including everything that has happened so far.  Again, thanks again for reading everything. Thanks so much for any help given.