Casey's Knee Journey

My amazing friend,  Casey has gone through so much the last year and a half. She's gone through 6 knee surgeries and no better way to tell her story. 

Hi, my name is Casey Gareis.

I am 29 years of age and I am a full time single mom to a daughter, age 10. I have full custody of her. I’m only court orders $50 in child support each month. Which I do not get.

I am looking for some sort of help, to get caught up on bills (rent, electric, car payment, incursion, ext…).

This is my last resort to try and stay afloat until I can get back to work. I have drained all my accounts and my nest egg trying to keep my head above water for me and my daughter. I wasn’t expecting to be out of work this long.

Need to try and figure out rent and other bills during the next two months at minimum.

My knee replacement recovery time will be longer then normal due to losing basically all function of my leg for awhile and losing most my muscle in that leg.

On March 24th 2020, I took a fall on some ice well trying to walk up a small hill. When I fell, I fell just right right on my right knee. That fall resulted in me losing cartilage in my right knee.

After 4 months of talking with the orthopedic doctor and going to physical therapy 2X/week with no results, we decided surgery would be our next step.

July24th 2020, I had my First surgery. They went in and scoped my knee. They cleaned up some stuff and drilled a bunch of holes around the cartilage loss in hopes that my body would create an “off brand” cartilage and fill the hole. Sadly that surgery did not do what we had hoped.

Since that failed, we decided to do a more invasive surgery called an “OATS” procedure. Basically, they cut my knee open, took cartilage from a good part of my knee and filled in the area that lost cartilage.

December 18th 2020, I went on for my second surgery. This surgery was a success, until 10 days after surgery. On December 28th, 2020 I started to feel the worst pain of my life. I went to two hospitals and they both sent me home. I was screaming in pain and you couldn’t touch any part of my body. I was told I had to wait until my post op with my surgeon. 4 days of hell I had to wait.

December 31st, 2020, I woke up to my knee oozing everywhere and I could feel my body shutting down. I went to my post op appointment like I was told to do. They sent me straight over to the hospital to do another surgery. Surgery #3! By this point, I was septic and could feel my body shutting down.

On January 1st 2021, I thankfully woke up. I learned that I had a serious case of MRSA and I had to have a picc line put into place to help fight MRSA. 3 weeks of vancomycin 3x/day. I Ended up with a blood clot in my left arm by my PICC line. That resulted in them removing the first one and putting in a second one in my right arm. They removed it January 28th,
2021.
February 9th 2021, I ended up back in the ER because something was still wrong. After checking a few things, they realized the MRSA wasn’t gone. It had traveled into my bone. We ended up doing surgery #4 that day. Again they went and did another clean out and put another PICC line (#3) in. This time 6 weeks of vancomycin 3x/day. Again, I had issues with my PICC line. They removed my old one and put in picc line #4. I eventually had that one removed once I finish my course of treatment.

From mid February to June, I kept telling my surgeon he needed to look at my knee because we were not making any progress. He never did check anything. Sometime in June 2021,my surgeon finally transferred my care down to the university of Minnesota.
The U of M did new imaging of everything and found a lot of issues.

After taking to two surgeons at the U of M, they decided my knee was past the point of saving. I now needed a new knee before the age of 30. But before they they could replace my knee they had to scope me and get a bunch of bone biopsies and fluid samples to make sure the MRSA was gone and to see how much damage it did to other bones.

July 8th, 2021, I went in for surgery #5. 18 samples were taken. Bone and fluid. All came back negative and the one bone they were worried about, looked okaying.

August 12th, 2021, I went in for surgery #6 to get a full knee replacement! Surgery went great but I ended up having to stay at the hospital longer then expected due to my blood pressure Dropping. After 3 round of rapid bolus infusions failed, they ended up doing a pint of blood which did the trick!

* I'm not good at asking for help or accepting handouts but I’m officially drowning in bills and other stuff. Especially with school coming.

* if you or anyone else you know that could help me out or have any suggestions for places to reach out to for help, that would be gratefully appreciated!

* RENT- $865/month
* VEHICLE PAYMENT - $284.65/month
* INSURANCE - $185.55
* ELECTRIC - $150ish (trying to catch up)  
* OTHER FINANCIAL IMPACTs - school clothes, phone, gas for appointments, medical supplies, exc… 

Thank you !
Casey Gareis