Hi! My name is Shannon and I have been best friends with Erin for the past 20 years. I’ve been there since the very beginning of Erin and Danny and have only loved them more and more! They are going through so much right now with Danny’s health and I know they have so many people that love them and would like a way to help so I want to give you an easy way to do that. We can help cover costs for the medical treatment at U of M,  the hotel costs, transportation and living expenses while Danny waits for his new heart and kidney. I will copy his story below. Thank you everyone! 

As many of you know, Danny has endured many health challenges in his life, most resulting from the side effects of the chemo he received as a child for his leukemia. The chemo weakened his heart and he was diagnosed with a cardiomyopathy at 14. At the time, he was monitored and started on only one cardiac med. Then at the age of 22 (8 months into dating) he had to have a major back operation. He got a post op infection that caused more damage to his heart and was at that point put on more meds. Between then and now he has been hospitalized periodically for congestive heart failure (too much fluid around the heart that can weaken your heart further). They’ve gotten the fluid off and tweaked his meds and he’s always bounced back. Unfortunately, deterioration of the kidneys is also very common in heart patients, especially when they have had heart disease as long as Danny has. Within the last year or so the doctors began to notice some changes in his kidney function, but felt at that point nothing needed to be done other than monitoring them. We knew there was a chance that more intervention would be needed for his kidneys down the road, but believed it was a long way off. As many of you also know, he had a parahthyroidectomy in March, and what was supposed to be an easy procedure, ended up being anything but, and started us down the road we’re on now. The surgery ended up putting too much stress on his kidneys (along with a test that uses dye and can be stressful on them also) and caused an acute kidney injury. As a result, he has been undergoing dialysis three days a week for the last three months. The hope was that his kidneys would recover enough to not need dialysis permanently. Which brings us to to this past week. He was admitted to Troy Beaumont on Tuesday night bc he was retaining a lot of fluid again. After two nights there, his cardiologist felt it was in Danny’s best interest to be transferred to
U of M bc his heart function had deteriorated quite a bit. Something I forgot to mention earlier is that he had been taken off most of his cardiac meds while on dialysis bc both dialysis and cardiac meds lower your BP. Basically, they were robbing Peter to pay Paul. While trying to get his kidney function to return, his heart was weakening even more bc of the lack of meds and bc his heart was already compromised when the the kidney injury happened, it’s been too difficult for his kidneys to recover. And that brings us to now and the biggest challenge we have ever faced: Danny needs a new heart and kidney. We have a long and scary road ahead of us, but he is in the best hands possible at U of M and the care he is receiving there is second to none. Please send love, good vibes, prayers, or whatever it is that you all use in times of need. We are surrounded by a wonderful village of family and friends who are doing everything they can to make this challenge as easy as possible for us and the kids and we can’t wait for the day to celebrate Danny’s new heart and kidney!