Medical Bills and Travel Expenses

Cortney said: It was a scary past few days. It's still hard to comprehend that we could have lost my little sister. Thankfully she got the care she needed to save her life. She still has a very long road ahead of her but she is doing amazing. The short version of the story is, Bailie was given a prescription for birth control pills in February to help with some other medical issues she was having and they caused blood clots to build in her right leg. Then when she drove 13 hours back to Idaho a few weeks ago, the clots began to dislodge and many went to her lungs. She complained about being short of breath but just assumed it was the altitude change. Then Sunday her leg turned black and swelled to twice it's original size. She was taken by ambulance to Caribou Memorial Hospital where they did a CT scan and found that she was literally full of blood clots. They transferred her to Portneuf Medical Center and tried to insert filters to prevent any more clots from traveling to her heart and lungs. They got one in her stomach but were unsuccessful with her legs and her foot began to turn black again. She was immediately lifeflighted to University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City and underwent surgery to try to save her leg. They were able to remove about 90% of the clots in her right leg (but there were so many she had to have a blood transfusion), and the color began to return to her foot. She is VERY lucky they were able to save it. She has a LOT of fighting left to do...her leg was unable to be stitched back up because of the swelling so she is now wearing a Hemovac to try to get it down enough to stitch up without skin grafts...they are doing a procedure today to try to remove the filter in her stomach that got damaged during her clot removal surgery...and there will be a LONG process to try to regulate her blood thinning medication enough that she can go home. "Home" will still mean doctors visits many times a week for quite a while. Bryce and I came back to Arizona last night to get some things taken care of here and we will be driving back next week. Thank you so much to everyone for the calls, texts, messages and support. And thanks Brittany for starting this gofundme. The MANY bills will start rolling in soon and she needs to be able to focus on recovering, so I'm so thankful to everyone who has shared this on their page or donated. We love you all!