Help Christina with emergency medical bills

Hi, I’m Christina’s daughter Jessica, and I’m trying to raise money for my mom to help pay her medical bills.

In February 2023, Chris had a routine colonoscopy and was diagnosed with stage 1 colon cancer. They quickly removed the polyp, but the doctors wanted to schedule a 2nd surgery to remove more tissue to ensure that it was all removed. This 2nd resection surgery was done on May 22nd, and all seemed well afterwards for a few short days. The good news was that the pathology report came back cancer free! But all the joy and celebration was put to an immediate halt when she was rushed to the ER just 4 days after the surgery with severe and relentless abdominal pain.

Upon arrival, a CT scan showed that she had an infection brewing at the surgery site. Chris was so sick, that she had to have an emergency surgery under the care of Edina Southdale Fairview hospital to clean out the infection in her colon. When they started the surgery, they quickly saw that it was much worse than they had originally thought. Her infection was so severe, the contents of her colon had been spilling out into the rest of her body.

During this emergency surgery, the doctor had no choice but to remove the perforated part of her colon and give her a colostomy bag to allow her colon to fully heal. Although this wasn’t ideal, it was necessary & the surgeon assured us that it can be reversed about 6 months after she healed.

The previous surgeon had thermal burned a hole through her colon when he had cauterized the tissue after the resection. We were all horrified at the scary reality of what damage that caused to Chris’s body.

She had to spend a long 10 days in the hospital with around the clock antibiotics. Chris was not only recovering from a major surgery, but also trying to battle a giant infection.

Although she was tired and in pain, she never stopped fighting for her life. She stayed strong.

We all thought this 10 day hospital stay was going to be the end of this battle but unfortunately it wasn’t.

Just 2 days after being released from the hospital, Chris was rushed back to the ER with a devastating fever of 104.2. There was something majorly wrong, and the doctors needed to find it quick. She was readmitted back to the hospital on June 7th where they took more scans & bloodwork to find she had another severe infection. This time, they didn’t know where it was coming from. They tried a broad range antibiotic, which for the first few days did nothing. Chris was so sick, with a constant fever hanging around 102-104. Since her bloodwork & fever were getting worse on the antibiotics, they added a 2nd antibiotic in. To everyone’s relief, it started to bring her WBC count & fever back down in to normal range.

She is still in the hospital as of Sunday, June 11th. Going on 15 days and counting.

Chris will be missing a lot of work to heal. Total recovery time is 6 months. She’s got a long road ahead of her.

She will also have a future colostomy reversal surgery that she was told will require a 3–5 day hospital stay.

Her job has been extremely supportive & compassionate during this time, but since she’s fairly new there she doesn’t qualify for short term disability or FMLA & used what little PTO she had on her original surgery.

Chris has been the best mom, wife, daughter, sister, friend, & coworker any of us could ask for. And I ask that if you can, to support her and make this transition back into life as smooth as possible. She deserves to heal comfortably ❤️ 100% of the proceeds will go to medical bills.