Help Mercedes and her new family!

Mercedes Hammer is an amazing woman. She is always there for people and is always willing to go the extra mile for those she loves. Anybody that meets her is immediately impressed by her positivity and infectious smile. She's always looking for the good in people, and is always the one to check in first when you've had a bad day, show up when you need her, and make you laugh when you want to cry. She's just a beautiful human being.

But, now it's our turn to be there for her. She recently became a first time mom. Her beautiful baby boy was born October 17, 2012. He is perfectly healthy. Mercedes did not fair as well. She was admitted to the hospital on that day to induce the baby because she was showing symptoms of preclampsia. But an emergency c-section had to be performed because the baby's heart rate dropped. Mercedes appeared to be doing great immediately after the birth, but over the next two days, she had some pain. And on the third day her condition drastically worsened. She was admitted into the ICU on October 20th, where she remained until, November 1st. Then to "Intermediate Care", then finally to a typical room where she was until being discharged just before Thanksgiving. (But has since been readmitted.  More on that in a bit.) There is no official diagnosis. Her symptoms were just so complex, so there was no way of knowing exactly what she has because a lot of these symptoms could point to several diseases: A severe form of preclampsia called HELLP Syndrome. And/or "Fatty Liver Induced by Pregnancy". Disseminated Intervascular Coagulation. Sepis (blood infection). And a blood disease called Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) was also discussed by a hematologist at one point.
So we don't know which one(s) of those she has, but one thing we do know is that all of the conditions listed above are life threatening and Mercedes has had almost every complication one could have from the conditions above. Kidney failure, liver failure, sepsis, pancreas issues, fevers, edema, uncontrolled bleeding to name a few.

She's undergone a myriad of treatments to help stabilize and reverse all this, including something similar to dialysis, called plasmapheresis, where they exchange her damaged plasma with undamaged plasma.

AND IT ALL SEEMS TO BE WORKING!!!!

Her kidneys are essentially normal, up from 25%! Her biliruben (measuring liver function) is finally starting to go down instead of up, and her white blood cell count is down a little as well. Her platelet count has gone up to near (low)normal levels from being critically, dangerously low.

She has a long road ahead of her. She had been intubated as well as sedated for days and days. She has since improved to the point where they let her go home, with home health care visits from nurses.  She was able to spend Thanksgiving at home.  Unfortunately tho she was readmitted shortly after that with fevers and pain. Which is time away from Dave and the baby. 

Being readmitted has shown us that it's going to be a long road, she won't be able to work for a while, but we all expect her to make a full recovery. She's a strong person and with love and support and determination, she will bounce back!

As she makes her full recovery, there will be bills. From the long hospital stay, from the rehab, pt, ot. She won't be able to work for a while. She and Dave will have their brand new baby boy and plenty of medical bills.

Please, friends, family, everyone that loves her, everyone that heard and saw updates on facebook about her, please donate to this site. It all goes directly to her, no middle man. We are friends of hers and created this site, but rest assured every penny (save for this site's small fees=5% of each donation) goes directly to Mercedes! Please help this amazing woman and her brand new family not have to worry about all the medical bills, so she can just focus on getting better, and they can focus on their new son, nicknamed Pinto because, you guessed it, he looked like a little pinto bean in the first ultrasound. Awww <3

Please help, every dollar matters. $5, $10, $20, anything you can give to this amazing woman and her family.

Thank you.

~Jesus and Kischa