Cassidy's Recovery Fund

Hi all! Chronic illness has kicked my butt for most of my life, especially in 2022. Below is a summary of my situation and tribulations over the last seven months.

TLDR; chronic ongoing GI issues has left me unable to work and falling behind on significant bills as I await for short-term disability payments to kick in.

Long version:

In December of 2021, I started getting terrible chest pains and lightheadedness. I went to the ER in Kalamazoo and was told that I had some inflammation around my chest, and if I took it easy for a few weeks, all should be well. The next day, I received a phone call from my doctor that they found something in my chest, and I needed to get an urgent CT scan. After a few days of immense stress, praying I did not have cancer, my tests returned as normal.

Great, right? Well, my chest pain never went away, and a few weeks later in January, I had severe stomach pain, burning, and uncontrollable cold sweats. That landed me back in the hospital where I live in Grand Rapids. I was given pain medication, and when I was stable, I was sent home to await my previously scheduled endoscopy and sigmoidoscopy.

My scopes came back mostly normal, except for being diagnosed with gastritis and GERD, which would explain the symptoms of my second ER visit and the new feeling of fullness in my stomach, making it hard to eat. I began my journey of trial and error with some medications, figuring out the correct dosages for recovery.

However, my GI doctor ghosted me. He didn't just ghost me, but refused to treat me as my GI issues began to evolve and worsen. His nurses would not allow me to make appointments with him, and he denied my request for a complete colonoscopy to explore the possibility of Crohn's Disease.

By February, I was struggling to drive without the feeling of passing out, and I would go 3-5 days without eating because of an overwhelming sense of fullness and nausea. By March, I begged the GI doctor multiple times a week to allow me to book an appointment to readdress my medication regime, but I was denied and told to go on anti-anxiety medications. I will save you the gruesome details of my gastrointestinal symptoms, but by mid-March, I could not eat without having a severe reaction to food within an hour, and I was in constant pain. My last meal was on March 12th.

I have a great care team outside of the GI doctor, but my symptoms needed far more care than my PCP could offer. She often referred me to the GI doctor or the ER. In March, I began going to the hospital weekly for pain and malnutrition. The ER doctors and my PCP could not understand why the GI doctor would not see me. My last phone call with this GI doctor resulted in me expressing my concern of medical racism, as I was called aggressive for naming their medical neglect, and then was reported to my PCP for being in a mental health crisis because I told the GI nurse that "their neglect will either kill me or may lead to believing taking my life will be the only thing to rid me of this pain." Not a threat, but the truth of the matter if I continued to be neglected.

I was referred to an University of Michigan GI specialist who got me in the following week, and scheduled my colonoscopy for the end of April. This team was the care that I needed, but at the time, was too little too late for how my symptoms had progressed. By the time of my colonoscopy, I had not eaten for 6 weeks. I only survived this by constant hospitalizations giving me fluids and electrolytes, and the fat on my body. I lost 65 pounds within two months.

The results of my colonoscopy came back as normal, thankfully, but we had to address my dying body. The things my body was doing was very scary, but I will again save you the details. I was offered to be given a feeding tube and stay in the hospital to be monitored for refeeding syndrome. This would allow for me to get the nutrients necessary for survival, while we work on reintroducing food through oral intake to my body, and also work with a specialist another specialist at the University of Michigan to address the GI symptoms.

So in May, I got my feeding tube, and I am in the process of recovery. I developed an eating disorder through this, which is prolonging my recovery (but that's okay!) and so I am getting care now in a partial program. I started eating again in June. I have a great, patient, and not neglectful care team. I am still looking for answers about what happened - it could be idiopathic, mind-gut connection related, an intense IBS flare up, a result of food poisoning I had early December, or some diagnosis that I am still searching for. I have heard a lot of folks with long COVID have had these symptoms too. Really, I am open to never getting an answer. I just want to heal and move forward with my life.

All of this to say; the financial burden of being off work has reached it's culmination, and the first of the month's bills are due. I have a great job (with great bosses who have been very caring and understanding for much longer than I would have anticipated), but HR has been very slow with starting up my short-term disability. I am awaiting my payments to start so I actually have income again after burning through my savings while dealing with this illness. I also had to leave another job (another great & supportive team), and the pandemic has put a halt on my other streams of income.

Any funds from this GoFundMe will help me stay afloat with my living expenses; maintaining my housing, other bills, medications, groceries, ubering to appointments, etc. It will also help me get supplies for art & freelancing gigs, so that when I am able to work again, I can supply my income of the secondary jobs I will physically be unable to do for a while. This experience has left me over $10k in medical debt, so what I am asking for doesn't touch the extent of my needs. Being able to stay afloat will help me not fall behind in the long run, so when I am recovered, I can address the medical debt on my own!

Thank you for reading my story, sharing, and donating. <3