Anna's Long-Term Medical Healing Journey

The Ask: Easing the Financial Burden of Medical Care

Our dear friend, and local Viroqua artist and photographer, Anna Kimm, is currently working through a long-term medical healing plan to regain her function and health. The plan is intense and demanding of all her time and energy. It has become a full-time job, but instead of earning a salary from all the time invested, she has accrued over $50,000 in medical debt in just five months.

 

 

She was fortunate to learn the nature of her ailments so quickly, because even just a couple months more without support would likely have meant hospitalization, full-blown epilepsy, and who knows what else. Intervention at this time has been crucial.

 

 

We are grateful that the right people were placed in her path at just the right time, and that she was accepted as a patient by one of the nation’s leading functional medicine doctors, who only works with a certain number of patients a year.

 

 

Please read on to learn more about the details of her condition(s) and consider contributing what you can to help ease the family’s financial burden.

 

 

The Story: Brain Injury, Chronic Illnesses, POTS, Mold, OH MY!

In November of 2021, a cascade of ailments led Anna to seek out the professional help of Dr. Robert Hedaya (MD, ABPN, DLFAPA, IFMCP) at The Center for Whole Psychiatry and Brain Recovery in Maryland. After spending five days in Maryland doing testing, she was diagnosed with Bipolar 2, pre-seizure activity, and POTS (a form of dysautonomia, a disorder of the autonomic nervous system). They also found signs of an old brain injury that impacts her ability to integrate and process information in her prefrontal cortex.

 

 

***Please note: “Physicians with expertise in treating POTS have compared the functional impairment seen in POTS patients to the impairment seen in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or congestive heart failure.1 Approximately 25% of POTS patients are disabled and unable to work.1 Researchers found that quality-of-life in POTS patients is comparable to patients on dialysis for kidney failure.21, 22” “ from Dysautonomia International: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome

 

 

She has thyroid and hormonal problems, gastrointestinal problems, and high levels of inflammation (and possibly covid long hauler). They also found evidence of mold in the home and have taken all necessary (and expensive) mold remediation steps.

 

The Doctor and The Care Plan: 

Dr. Hedaya is an excellent doctor who has been meticulous in his plan to treat Anna’s chronic illnesses. This includes: numerous qEEGs, weekly lab tests and at-home tests, dietary changes, hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatments, and neurofeedback. In addition, she takes 40 supplements and numerous prescription medications daily, works with several therapists, a nutritionist, a functional medicine doctor, and is in an ACA program.

 

 

She is receiving the most holistic care to restore balance and harmony to a deeply disordered bodily state. Slowly but surely, they are starting to see improvement in her brain, but this is only the beginning of her journey. There will be more tests and more procedures. They anticipate spending another $50,000 before the year is over.

 

 

Dr. Hedaya has said that managing stress is critical right now because of her brain injury and pre-seizure activity. The family is doing what they can to support their mother and spouse as she is in a critical time of recovery and they cannot let her illnesses wreak more havoc and cause more harm. Ryan has had to decrease his work hours to take care of their two children and responsibilities in the home, making paying the bills even more complex and seemingly out of reach.

 

 

 

We hope to help reduce some of their stress by reaching out to this dynamic and compassionate community for financial support. Your financial help would directly pay the debt they have already accrued so that what is yet to come will not seem so scary and impossible.

 

 

 

Love and light to you all,

 

 

 

Gail Doesken, Beth Krieger-Fritsch, and Asha Myers

PS

And can we just say how much we love ANNA KIMM? If you know her, you know she radiates authenticity. It's easy to fall in love with her and want to be her best friend because she is just so gosh darn understanding and empathetic with everyone.

She embodies the sacred and the hilarious.

She feels everything deeply and can speak to the profound and also to the vulgar! And this is something just so scrumptious about her.

Anna is a gorgeous dancer, yogi, painter, and photographer. She makes living an art and is bringing healing and beauty to the world in just a thousand and one ways. We hope to affirm through this fundraiser that we NEED her on this good, green earth for a long time still, and that we NEED her well and vibrant and healthy, able to access her gifts and continue to share them with the world. She's kind of our favorite.

By the way, if you want to see more of her art (cuz it's pretty epic), check out her portfolio site HERE .