Julia Bamke-Medical and inpatient care expenses

Julia was born with spina bifida and at birth, had to have surgery to repair her spine. Over the years she has done incredibly well for someone with this condition. At around age 10 they had found out through an MRI that she had a cyst that formed inside her back in the area that had been repaired when she was a newborn. Her neurosurgeon reassured them that there was no need to worry, that it was a dermoid cyst that formed due to scar tissue there. He said they’d just continue to watch it by doing MRI’s every six months to see if it grew. There hadn’t been any issues until recently. Over the past year, Julia had been complaining of intermittent pain in her back as well as some numbness and tingling in her arms and legs along with some other issues. Over the past month the pain had increased and she started to get weaker. The couple weeks before she had surgery she was to the point of barely being able to walk and would fall because of the weakness in her legs. The pain in her back had also become unbearable. So they reached out to her neurosurgeon who ordered yet another MRI. That is when he found that her spinal cord was tethered to the cyst in her back. With the deterioration in her mobility and her bladder function, he recommended doing the surgery as soon as possible. The doctor told them that having the surgery would almost definitely cause her to lose her bladder function (that she had had control of all on her own for the past 19yrs). This was devastating news but surgery or not, she was already on her way to losing function of her bladder due to her neurogenic bladder caused by her spina bifida. So she had the surgery on Friday June 11, which ended up taking almost six hours when they originally had told them that it would be anywhere from two to four hours! The doctor found that the cyst was a lot larger than he thought. He said he had to drain it and that he removed as much of the cyst as he could but he could not remove it all. He found that some of the cyst was attached to other nerves. So the risk of injuring those other nerves and causing more problems by attempting to remove it all, was not worth it. The cyst may grow back in the future, but not anytime soon. So all they can do is continue to monitor. The first night after her surgery was awful. When she woke up from anesthesia she was in an incredible amount of pain, and not surgical site pain, but a horrible headache. Krisi had never seen her daughter in so much pain or felt so helpless as a mother. They finally rushed her to get a CT scan after nothing was helping her head pain and found she had air around her brain from surgery. They said that it would eventually be reabsorbed but it would take a few days. So not only did she have the pain from surgery to deal with, but also this horrible headache. Krisi stayed by her side the entire time doing whatever she could to help her little girl who was suffering. Finally, by about Monday, the headache improved. Now they could start getting her up and out of bed and teach her how to use a catheter for when she goes home. However, that did not go as planned. Rolling over in bed and sitting up was a huge struggle at first because of the pain but each day she got better and better. But when it came time to start walking, she couldn’t. The nurses and PT have been working with her a couple times a day but she just doesn’t have the strength back in her legs. This was very unexpected. Julia has been trying so hard and is becoming more and more frustrated. 

Julia is still inpatient as of June 20, at UW AFCH in Madison. They are working on having her transferred to an inpatient rehab facility for intense physical therapy to help her regain her ability to walk. Her doctor said that complete recovery from this kind of surgery could take months, maybe even up to a year, for her to hopefully regain the mobility she had before.  

Thank you for reading this if you have made it to this point. Julia is a strong, beautiful, intelligent young woman and has a whole life ahead of her that she’s going to rock!  She just needs a little help right now. So please, keep her in your prayers. 

Julia has been unable to work since the beginning of May due to the pain and weakness in her legs. This has caused financial hardship for her. Since she will be going to rehab once she is able to leave the hospital, she will still be unable to work and support herself. Any help for this strong young woman would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you ❤️