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A Helping Hand

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Hello friends, family, Lyft family and future friends,

My name is Carlos; I’m 34 and live in San Francisco California. I am a full time student at City College of San Francisco in my 4th year and working on getting accepted to UC Berkeley next year to complete my BS. My wife of 7 years Veronica is also a full time CCSF student in her first year, she works part time and at the moment is the primary caretaker of our 3 year old son. Our son Mayu just started his first year in preschool in August and loves every minute of it, with the awesome families and children it has been the perfect fit for our little family.

Around September 20th I had started to get a huge amount of abdominal pain and couldn’t explain why, I decided to go to the ER and they gave me pain meds ruled it was heart burn and constipation and discharged me. About a week later I had the same issue and went again to the ER this time they did more extensive testing which consisted of a CT scan and an ultrasound. They found gallstones and a thickening of the gallbladder, at the time the ER doctors were unsure if I should be admitted or if I should wait to see my regular surgeon who performed my bariatric surgery 2 years ago with no complications.

Because of issues with insurances I was unable to get a referral out to see my surgeon so I was unfortunately in lots of pain and at the mercy of county insurance. It was recommended by my surgeon’s office to go into the ER because he was the on call surgeon and he would admit me right away. I had a laparoscopic gallbladder removal surgery on October 4th. After about 4 day’s post- op I started running into some complications, I was having severe pain and discomfort amongst other things. After 8 days post-op the pain got so bad that I couldn’t handle it, I called the on call surgeon just for him to tell me to take some miralax to help constipation, despite his recommendations I went into the ER.

This time as soon as I went into the ER they took my full vitals ran a bunch of test and found that I had a collection of bile in my system from a bile duct leak; I was admitted into the ICU right away because I had sepsis. The following day I was transported to another CPMC campus and they performed a endoscopy procedure where they put a small stent in the bile duct to stop the leak, mind you that the clamp from the original surgery had failed mere days after the surgery was done.

Unfortunately during the procedure I had gone into septic shock and they had to intubate me and I woke up in the ICU freaked out with tubes in me and doctors looking at me like a specimen through glass, not a very pleasant feeling. At that point they had me on a ventilator for 2 days and my Heart rate was through the roof and my Blood Pressure had dropped. During this time it had also been my son Mayu’s 3rd birthday and it was one of the most heartbreaking things for me as a father, I was a stay at home dad with my son for his first two years and didn’t miss a thing in my son’s life. I was able to see my son for a few minutes in the ICU despite the rules of the ICU, thank you to those CPMC nurses that made it happen. I was put into a regular room 4 days after the stent was put in and under close observation the following 3 days until my discharge.

I was slowly recovering at home and decided to attempt to go back to school a week after I was released, which wasn’t the best idea but I’m glad I did. Using Lyft to get around San Francisco since I couldn’t drive was a relief. Going back to school made my Heart Rate shoot through the roof and prompted me to return to the ER for another series of test upon the results from a 2nd CT scan they found I had over 1,000 cc of fluid in my body that was pushing down on my liver and pushing up on my right diaphragm causing me shortness of breath. So they went in put a drain tube in my abdomen and found over a full liter of bile that had leaked from the failed stent, the GI surgeons also went in and replaced the first stent put in a week before with a bigger metal stent to try and repair the damaged bile duct. So once again I was released and recovering very well, watching my beloved SF Giants in the World Series. While watching game 6 in agony from the score, I had started to get some external leakage from the drain tube they had kept in me to drain the bile. So once again I was back in the hospital getting a second JP drain tube installed and once again a week to the day of the last drainage they were able to get another full liter of bile out of me.

Right now as I’m typing it has been 4 days since my last discharge from my 4th hospital stay in 6 weeks.

That’s where I come to you, fortunately my medical bills have been covered so far but my family and I really rely on additional income from me working Lyft and my wife has had to take lots of time off from her 20 hr. a week job. As students we had already been on a very tight budget and cost of living and expenses it has really taken a toll on us financially. The doctors say I won’t be up and fully able to do my everyday thing until or around the first week of December and that makes me worry as a father and husband. It has taken a lot out of me physically, emotionally and mentally knowing that I can’t just get up and work to make a few bucks like I’ve done over the past few years with Lyft. So we are trying to raise enough money to cover 2 moths of expenses and get through the holiday season with bills paid. Fortunately our rent is low but we have expenses such as my son’s tuition for school, utilities, insurances and our car payment.

So please if you can big or small donate to help my family and I get past this tough time and don’t hesitate to email me with any questions or drop me a line of support.

Thank you,

The Miranda Family

Donations 

  • Anonymous
    • $100 
    • 9 yrs

Organizer

Carlos J. Miranda Vsg
Organizer
San Francisco, CA

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