Donations to help with Kris Polson’s medical bills

Friday afternoon, October 6 2023, Kris and I decided to come down to Liberty Missouri to spend the night, go to dinner, go to a movie, just to have some time away. We had a great night and Saturday morning Kris got up and showered like normal we had breakfast at the hotel, and we were on our way into Kansas City just a little bit before 10:00 a.m.

As we were driving, Kris started saying " that's so bizarre "and when I asked him what was bizarre he just gave me a blank look. It was like he was trying to formulate thoughts but all he could say was " it's just bizarre ". After 1 or 2 minutes of him doing that I asked him to pull off to the side of the road, because I was concerned about him. He was able to navigate the car off to the shoulder of the road and he waited in the car until traffic cleared and then we switched seats. When I got in the driver side he was already in the passenger side and had done up his seat belt. So I didn't have a lot of red flags right that moment except that I just felt like something was off. As we started to drive I started going back in the direction of Liberty. I had this feeling that I needed to get him some medical care. I also felt like something was wrong and I needed to see if he could recite the alphabet. When I asked him to do so he just replied " December ". At that moment I knew something was going on and I was fearful that he was having a stroke.

I navigated to the emergency room of the Liberty hospital, and got him inside, and as they were doing the check-in, he began to draw squares with his finger in front of his face. I asked him if he was seeing shapes and he just nodded his head, yes. Right after that he started to do a really weird high giggle and immediately went into a grand mal seizure.

I was standing behind him and immediately wrapped my arms around his chest, because I was worried that he would fall out of the wheelchair onto the floor. It's amazing how strong the human body is when it is seizing. The immediately got him back to the ER

They let me know that they had given him Ativan to counteract the seizure. And they also started him on fluids and were doing various blood draws. At one point someone came in and swabbed his nose, checking for COVID. He ended up testing positive for COVID, which we didn't realize he had.

At this point the ER doctor had been talking to the neurologist and they wanted him admitted to the ICU.

They did CT scans, X-rays, blood work and and MRI. They ruled out a stroke. They eventually intubated him because his oxygen levels were too low.

They also did an EEG and an EKG last night. The EEG is measuring the electrical activity or the seizure activity in the brain and the EKG was measuring the electrical out put of the heart. His heart was great, there were no blockages in the arteries leading to the brain, CT scans came back clear, no bleeding and no clots.

Kris spent about 3 weeks in the hospital testing everything from Auto Immune to herpes encephalitis. No herpes virus and no auto immune.

He was discharged and sent home with lots of follow up visits to the neurologist. He also spent weeks working with speech therapy because when he woke up after the intubation he couldnt read and his short term memory was affected. The seizure activity was located in the temporal lobe which is the learning center of the brain.

After 3 weeks his brain was still swollen.

He did pretty well through November but as December approached the seizures became a daily thing. They are not grand mal, they are more of a focal seizure. Most of the time he can talk right through them.

They did another MRI December 5th and that one showed 3 tiny spots in the swelling area but they ruled out anything suspicious.

The end of December he had a 6 day in home EEG study where he was monitored 24/7 for any seizure activity. He had 1 seizure that week.

On January 8th he woke up and had 14 seizures that day. The 9th he had 44!! On the 10th we called the neurologist who had him readmitted to the hospital where there did another MRI and lumbar puncture.

This MRI came back showing more spots in his brain so after consulting with the Neuro Surgeon, they decided to do a biopsy. He had that on Jan 16th. We still do not have final pathology back. So we don't have all the answers yet

On Jan 5th, Kris had a conversation with his work stating he would still need time to recover completely and needed to go on long term disability. He was let go from his job that day, which was a huge impact on him.

Right now we are trying to get our insurance set up, we are also waiting for long Term disability to go into affect.

This go fund me is set up right now to help us offset the mounting medical bills coming in and to act as a buffer to help financially until long term disability is in affect.

We are so blessed to have the most amazing tribe to support us and give great thanks and gratitude for anything contributed.

So that's pretty much where we're at, in a nutshell. We totally appreciate continued prayers in our behalf. I know that I personally have felt such sustaining power as many people have fasted and prayed for our family for my husband.