Help Cover Britt's Hip Replacement!

As you may have heard, Brittany has decided to undergo a full hip replacement on her right hip on May 24th, in Chicago, IL.

To make a long story short, Britt has CAM impingement syndrome (which basically means that the ball-shaped end of her femur is not perfectly round. She has a massive bone spur that is shredding through her remaining cartilage. This bone spur interferes with the femoral head's ability to move smoothly within the hip socket - ultimately causing debilitating pain). After examining her x-rays, doctors believe that she fractured this femoral head at some point (playing basketball), because it appears that the top half of the ball has grown back shifted to the left causing catching on both sides of bone.

To make matters more complicated, Britt has arthritis and a degenerative disease in her hip that has caused the deterioration of her cartilage. Her right hip is measuring at 38% out of the normal 100% -- which means that she'll frequently experience bone on bone pain.

Her insurance company, Kaiser, presented her with two different surgeons - both of whom were not confident in going through with this procedure on someone her age. However, they both attested to the fact that this was her only option. She's considered a gamble in that statistics for hip replacements are based on people who are 60 years of age and older, so there's no way to gauge the shelf-life of the artificial hip (which is normally around 15-20 years). Both surgeons articulated that they've only done a couple of these replacements on women her age - as you can imagine for someone as active as Brittany, this caused a lot of anxiety.

After doing research, Britt discovered one of the top hip surgeons in the world, Dr. Richard Berger. He pioneered the first minimally invasive hip replacement - Dr. Berger’s groundbreaking technique allows patients to recover faster, and with less pain, than patients undergoing traditional hip replacements. His minimally invasive approach enables Dr. Berger to perform surgeries on an outpatient basis, without cutting any muscle, ligaments, or tendons, or dislocating any existing joints. After reading through testimonials of professional athletes (+ young active people) and discovering that he uses gender specific implants (as opposed to one-size fit all) - Britt knew that she needed the best of the best to operate on her.

For more info on Dr. Berger, you can find him here: https://outpatienthipandknee.com/about/

Since Dr. Berger is out of network, Britt has to pay for the entire hip replacement out of pocket. The original estimate given was $55k, but Dr. Berger + his team have graciously decided to give Britt a significant discount bringing the cost down to $30k. She must submit her payment in full by May 17th!

This $30k includes the following: preoperative internist appointment at the hospital, Dr. Berger's surgical fee, Rush University Medical Center fee, medication, and post-operative physical therapy.

This, however, does not include travel, hotel, and transportation that Britt will need to stay in for the week that she's in Chicago. We're estimating that it will cost an additional $2,000. The remaining money will cover supplies to make her home ADA, the various medications that she’d be prescribed (that she’ll have to pay out of pocket for), and the Game Ready ice machine that she’ll need to purchase.

In order for Britt to live a semi-normal (and pain free life), getting a new hip is the only option. Not to mention, she'd love to have kids in the next couple of years, and keeping her existing hip would create a number of issues around that matter. So not only is this new hip being proactive for her future (and her ability to heal quicker now), but it's allowing her to live life again and not be limited in what she's able to do.

Please help her to get the care she needs and deserves! Your gift of any amount is greatly appreciated!

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