Unforeseen medical bills

Hi, my name is Dillon, I’m a local musician and I’ve always worked in the food service industry. For the last 3 years I’ve loved working at everybody’s favorite local restaurant here in Winston Salem - Westend Café. I’ve recently been at the ER and in the hospital twice and am unable to work for a while, I’m starting this GoFundMe in hopes of raising $3,000- $5,000 to help pay my for my unexpected medical and living expenses.

Some background – I’ve been an insulin dependent diabetic since I was 15 months old. My parents did a great job managing my diabetes when I was a kid, and I’ve worked hard to keep myself healthy as an adult. This Spring I’d had some intermittent stomach issues which I wrote off to occasionally eating the wrong thing, but in the early morning hours of April 9th (Easter Sunday), I found myself at the Emergency Room.

They confirmed it was my gallbladder and removed it on 4/11, I got to go home on 4/12. All went well, for a while and I was improving, hoping to be back at work by mid-May. Unfortunately, I developed some complications and found myself back at the ER on Sunday, 4/30. They discovered a lot of fluid in my abdomen and a bit in my lungs, and a lot of infection. They admitted me and scheduled a procedure to put a drain in my abdomen on Monday, plus they started me on IV antibiotics.

That Monday they discovered there were 2 pockets of infected fluid, so they inserted 2 drains into my stomach. This sucked enough and was pretty painful, but then on Tuesday they told me that bile was leaking into my abdomen so they would have to insert a stent to redirect this to drain into my intestine. Once they got the tube in me (ERCP), they found they needed to put 2 stents in; one for the gall duct and one for the pancreatic duct. I got to go home on Thursday, 5/4 after they switched me to oral antibiotics.

At this point I’m HOPEFUL that I will get to go back to work and back to my life by early June, but I won’t know for sure until follow-up appointments later this month. I also am scheduled for outpatient surgery to remove the stents in mid-July.

I have health insurance, but no short-term disability and my savings didn’t go very far with just normal, everyday bills without income. I’m hoping you might have a few bucks that you could spare to help with these very unexpected expenses. Everything that might be raised here will be used for medical expenses and unpaid medical leave from work. I appreciate you and any help you might be able to manage, and I hope you might also share this for more visibility.