Community Help for Christy's Medical Bankruptcy

*For the sake of transparency, please note that GoFundMe charges 2.9% + $0.30 for each donation transaction.

I also have PayPal: [email redacted] and Zelle: [email redacted]

Today is my 28th birthday, and the greatest gift I could receive is help from the community to recover from my medical bankruptcy.

My first experience of symptoms occurred back in March of 2021. I got a heartburn attack for the first and only time, and it was the most painful chest pressure I had ever felt. I tried TUMS and Pepto, but neither worked. I began throwing up profusely and had aggressive diarrhea. Later in the night, I took a trip to the ER. Because I was still on my mother's health insurance at the time, I took action to find a gastroenterologist and hoped to figure out the cause. After multiple visits, I finally got an upper endoscopy (a procedure where a camera is inserted into the stomach to check for ulcers). The results concluded that I was internally healthy.

Unfortunately, shortly after that procedure, I got kicked off of my mother's health insurance due to my age. I had just moved to CO a few months back in August of 2020 to explore myself in a new place and was working in the restaurant industry as a server. At least every other month, the symptoms began reoccurring. I never experienced heartburn again, but the intense vomiting and diarrhea would return and last about a week each time. I couldn't hold down water, let alone food, and I could barely stand, so I found myself taking off from work more often than I or my managers liked. It didn't help that the restaurant industry lifestyle can be quite toxic (habitual use of alcohol and drugs), so sometimes I got the feeling that my managers and owners doubted my honesty and thought I was taking off from being hungover. This further discouraged me from taking care of myself in the ways that I really needed.

Pretty much every time my symptoms reoccurred, I would drag myself to the nearest Urgent Care to rehydrate through IV. This kept happening for an entire year. My appetite was inconsistent and I dropped down to 100 lbs (I'm 5'5"). My gums were deteriorating from how much stomach acid was coming into contact with them.

In March 2022, the symptoms came back again. I was so completely exhausted and utterly devastated from going through the pain over and over again. I knew I couldn't continue living the way I was, and I desperately needed assistance. I suddenly found myself quitting my job and asking my mother if I could move back home to NJ. Then, as if God or the cosmos knew I was ready, everything happened all at once.

The Urgent Care I usually visited and most others were strangely all out of IVs. I finally found Federico F. Peña Southwest Urgent Care which was fully equipped due to their collaboration with Denver Health Hospital. They did some bloodwork, and I was immediately notified that I had kidney injuries. At the time, I barely understood my biology. I had no idea what kidneys were supposed to do. They fed me some magnesium through my IV. Afterward, they took more of my blood and communicated with me that although my magnesium levels were back to normal, my kidney injuries were worsening. I was recommended to visit the ER.

I got a ride to Denver Health and felt extremely sick while sitting in the ER waiting room. I almost left and planned to return the next day because I barely had the energy to sit upright. After what felt like an eternity, I got a bed. After more IV fluids, I was urgently notified that I needed to be admitted to the hospital. It all happened incredibly fast. Ultrasounds and CT scans were performed. After a day or two of testing and speaking with doctors, I was diagnosed with bilateral hydronephrosis. The function of our kidneys is to filter our blood from toxins. The waste product is urine. Our urine then travels from our kidneys, down through our ureters, and into the bladder. Both of my ureters had blockages, which was causing my kidneys to swell intensely. They couldn't do their job at the rate they needed to.

So essentially, every month for a year, I was experiencing extreme kidney pain. And my body was poisoning itself from its inability to clean my blood.

I was suddenly told that I was to have an emergency double nephrostomy tube procedure the next morning. This involves an interventional radiology team making two incisions in my lower back and inserting wiring and tubing through those holes to drain my kidneys out of my body directly, without the use of my ureters or bladder. It was fascinating how unafraid I was due to my desperation for physical relief.

It was miraculous that not long before this, the restaurant I was working for decided to offer its employees health insurance through their company. Mine began in April. This all happened at the end of May. Unfortunately, only an hour after my procedure, I was transported via ambulance to Presbyterian St. Luke's Medical Center due to my particular insurance. My hospitalization there was from June 1st to June 8th.

My appetite was finally returning to me, and I felt ravenous for delicious food. I began cooking again. I regained my healthy habits of daily meditation and journaling. Although my nephrostomy tubes brought me a lot of unusual discomforts, I was relieved to leave my symptoms in the past. My body slowly and gradually returned to regular functions.

In August 2022, I moved back home. For a while, my body was in a constant state of stress about returning to the place of my childhood traumas. My mother has trouble with her emotional processing, and although she had the intention of caring for me, inevitably put pressure on my situation. It was helpful that my sister, currently a senior in high school, was also living at home and provided me with the intimacy and emotional support I needed.

After meeting with multiple urologists, I finally found a surgeon at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital who could take on my case. We redid all of my past imaging and tests on top of new ones, and in December, finally determined that the surgery I needed was an illeal neobladder surgery. We scheduled it for March 27th of this year.

The day finally came, and I was both nervous and excited. I did whatever I could in advance to prepare my fear into courage. The surgery was 6 hours long, and it was successful with no complications. What a time to be alive, when we've studied our body mechanics long enough so that people may help us live through something like this. Waking up from surgery was tough. I had a lot of abdominal pain, and it hurt to sit up or turn or cough or sneeze. There were five robotics incisions on my stomach that were glued shut. My nephrostomy tubes were capped but had not been removed, and in addition, I had a Foley catheter, ureter stents, and a stomach drain.

Before I got discharged from the hospital that following Friday, my nephrostomy tubes and stomach drain were pulled out from my body. After 10 full months with tubes sticking out of my back, I was finally free. I cried out of joy. It astounds me that I spent the majority of my 27th year disabled.

Now, I am healing at home with a Foley catheter and double ureter stents, which will be removed at my post-op appointment on April 25th. It will be my first day without any unnatural tubing in my body, and I look forward to the bliss of a normal life.

Through all of this, I find myself somehow more aware of the beauty of the everyday experience. I must say... this has been the most difficult and loneliest period of my life, but there is grace in suffering silently in solitude. I simply cannot believe I've made it through. Life is good to me.

To be completely honest, I am aware of the massive amount of medical debt I am in, and I don't expect to raise all of it. But I do want to share my experience truthfully and explicitly. I think it serves all of us as a collective to learn from each story, especially the brutal ones. My intention with the money I receive is to pay my bills, my debt collectors, and hopefully my mother back for covering my health insurance throughout this difficult time.

If you are fiscally able to donate, whether you gift $5 or $500, thank you. Really. Thank you for your love, your expression of care, and your act of generosity. Please know that I will carry it with me as I recover my physical and financial wellness. And I wish us all a healthy journey forward.

So much gratitude,

Christy Xu

CO MEDICAL BILLS

Denver Health (already sent to a debt collector) $1,535.32

Presbyterian St. Luke’s Medical Center (already sent to a debt collector) $6,231.08

[*PAID IN FULL - THANK YOU!] Colorado Kidney Care $936.19

Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance $377.64 ($188.82/month Aug-Sept ’22)

NJ MEDICAL BILLS

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Insurance $1,135.96 ($283.99/month Sept-Dec ’22) + $1,213.56 ($303.39/month Jan-Apr ’23)

Princeton Radiology Associates $177.12

Penn Medicine $3,807.99

University Radiology $313.88

Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital $6,370.34

NJ Urology $219.89

+Miscellaneous (medicine, dressings, irrigation care)

TOTAL MEDICAL DEBT

$22,318.97 ($19,591.81 not including total monthly health insurance of $2,727.16 Aug ’22-Apr ’23)