Dustin's Living & Medical Expenses

Hello. My name is Samantha Chambers. I am a close friend & colleague of Dustin Howard's. I am creating this GoFundMe fundraiser to hopefully help aid in his expenses during what has become, a very difficult time for him.

To start back at the "beginning", last week Dustin had been experiencing very intense and painful lower abdominal discomfort. He was finding it difficult to live his life and work normally due to the immense amount of pain he was experiencing. Finally, after a few days of stagnant, continuous pain, he went to the emergency room on Thursday evening. After a lot of testing ranging from bloodwork to an MRI they diagnosed him with colitis and discovered an abcess in his small intestine. This discovery resulted in admission to the hospital where he spent 3 days being monitored and pumped with antibiotics.

On Sunday, the doctor's felt he was in well enough health to be discharged and sent home to continue with oral antibiotics. Unfortunately, his time out of the hospital was short-lived. That evening he began to experience a pain, as he described, "10x worse than he had felt before." This pain led him back to ER that night and they found that the abcess had ruptured, sending infection throughout his abdomen and chest. This discovery quickly resulted in them taking him into surgery, where unfortunately they had to remove part of his intestine and his colon to remove the damaged parts of his organs. For the time being he also has to have a colostomy bag as they were unable to fully repair his colon for his body to output waste normally and will need a second surgery in the future to finish what they started and get things flowing in the proper direction again.

Currently he is still hospitalized without health insurance, (medicaid denied him) and has a long road to recovery which means he is unable to work for an extended amount of time. He has two dogs (Royce & Ace) and a cat (Charles) as well that are being taken care of by close friends and currently displaced from their home with him while he recovers. His pets are his babies and a big part of his emotional support so reuniting with and caring for them will hopefully be in the near future! 

   Dustin is one of the most giving people I know. He is kind and he would go without to make sure someone else didn't. He needs help with medical expenses and monthly bills. If you are able to donate, if even only a little, it will be greatly appreciated and beyond helpful. If you are not able to donate, please take the time to share this page so that we can get him as much help as possible! Thank you all so much for taking the time read, donate and share! 

Sincerely, Samantha (for Dustin)