Dung Nguyen's Medical Expenses

There's no quite bond like that between a mother and child.

Hello everyone, it's been a really hard year for my family, especially my father's prostate cancer earlier in the year and the loss of my two beloved pets during the middle of the year. However, as of October 31, 2017, my mother suffered a brain aneurysm that ruptured and caused her stroke during her surgical process, which left her in Neurocritical ICU at St. Francis for a few weeks and was transferred over to Wesley Rehabilitation Hospital afterwards.

I have never been the one to ask for any help; however, as my mother is in recovery, I began to realize how astronomical her medical expenses were.

As it started, my mother was found on October 31, 2017 around 4 a.m. laying in the kitchen while having pill rolling movements coming from her hands. My father and I tried to get her to regain consciousness to move her back to the sofa in the living room, but we thought it was something worse, so we called EMS, which took us to Wesley Medical Center. My mother was in such critical condition that she went into cardiac arrest twice in the ER and had to get CPR and was later transferred over to Via Christi St. Francis in the Neurocritical ICU, which to our insurance, the facility was out-of-network for her. It was extremely scary the first day as my father and I were waiting anxiously to get her into surgery. About her fourth day in Neuro ICU, the neurosurgeon took her to surgery to clip her aneurysm and warned us of situations that may occur during her clipping process. After about six hours of waiting, we were told that my mother had a stroke during the clipping and would need to remain in Neuro ICU. As she recovered in Neuro ICU for 2.5 weeks, she was transferred out to Wesley Rehabilitation Hospital to start her physical, occupational and speech therapies. It's been about 47 days since she's been in the rehabilitation hospital and all I really worried and cared about was that my mother getting better each day.

Now that she is back home with family, she will continue physical and occupational therapies through home health services and it may take up to six months for a stroke survivor to function normally again.

With my current family finances, it has been difficult for my family to find ways to pay the medical expenses, especially when we have insurance as well. I had considered trying to get a second job to help pay for these expenses, but knowing that my mother would need assistance in-home, I don't think it is wise for me to be gone for most of the day, which is the time that she critically needs assistance.

We received most of the medical expenses from Wesley Medical Center's ER, EMS and Via Christi St. Francis already, with the exception of Wesley Rehabilitation Hospital and the home health service therapies, and it is astronomical without insurance. I sat down and added the totals and it is approximately about $450,000 total. I am thankful that my mother has insurance to pay a large portion of it; nevertheless, we still have a long journey ahead to pay the rest of the expenses.

However, my goal is to not only assist with the medical expenses incurred on my family, but what I need most are prayers and support. That's truly all I need. Your generosity would help tremendously in this difficult period, but I truly believe there's a deity up in Heaven and is helping my mother be better every single day.

I know not everyone may know my mother, but to me and those who knows her, she is a strong and empowering woman who is so resilient, especially in her recovery. She has gone through a lot of challenges, especially coming over to the United States during the Vietnam War aftermath to provide her children a better living environment and opportunities. I love my mother and would do anything to help my mother as she has given so much to me already.