If you’re reading this, you probably know me, but if you don’t: my name is Chris and I am a concert and theatrical lighting designer. I travel the world to help make concerts and other shows look great. It never crossed my mind that I would be asking for help on GoFundMe. But here we are.

This past April, I started feeling sick with what seemed like a simple flu-like illness. Really, it was just a constant low grade fever. But I did all the right things. I went to urgent care’s and infectious disease doctors. Life continued pretty well uninterrupted while my doctors did test after test trying to find what seemed to be a minor infection. By July 16, I found myself finishing up a tour in Denmark, with some new tests scheduled immediately upon my return home. On Sunday July 26, a few days after the latest round of bloodwork, my infectious disease doctor called me late that evening and told me to go straight to the emergency room where a bed would be waiting for me. It was probably the scariest phone call I’ve had in my life.

What he had found, but didn’t have time to explain to me until I had made it to the emergency room that I had a severe bacterial blood infection that was very likely to adversely affect my heart.

Sure enough, upon further testing, my incredible team of doctors found that I had streptococcus running through my veins and building itself a summer home on my aortic valve. Thankfully, the infectious disease team was able to wipe the infection from my blood in 24 hours. Pretty incredible.

My heart was a different story. I was transferred to the cardiac unit at Morristown Medical Center, one of the top centers for what I was going through in the country, where the team there took over my care. We ran lots of really cool imaging and at first decided to wait and see how my heart responded to the antibiotics. Unfortunately that response never came and my heart actually showed signs of worsening, so they decided to go in and fix it.

On August 19th I was rolled into surgery where they opened my chest and completely replaced my aortic valve and root as well as repaired the damage done to my aortal-mitral curtain. The surgery went well and after another ten days in the cardiac recovery unit, I was released home. There are months of work ahead before I am back to 100%, but I’m slowly making progress.

Unfortunately I will be unable to travel for work for the next few months, which is most of how I earn my income. This is where I start to need help. Without being able to do much of the work I would normally do, these medical bills are starting to look ominous. Even with health insurance, I’m still facing a healthy five-figure out-of-pocket expense for all of this. It’s going to be a complicated few months with a reduced income, big medical bills, and all sorts of appointments and therapy. But it’s also a time to be grateful for my family, friends, doctors, nurses, and everyone else that got me through these past five weeks.

I’ve never come close to asking for help like this before. But if this isn’t a good reason, I don’t know what is.