Hello,

My daughter Courtney is going into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN on May 11th to have three major surgeries for full replacement of both of sides of her jaw (temporomandibular joints) and her 6th endoscopic sinus surgery.

Because she can not open her mouth and is in sever pain (has been for over a year now and has not been able to eat and can only drink non dairy protein drinks) she has not been able to work for a year and is facing a 2nd year while she has the surgeries and recovery time.

Photos are below, the one with her mouth open shows the most she can open her mouth. She isn’t able to even fit a spoon in her mouth and sucking on a straw is too painful.

Courtney will be undergoing three major surgeries at once, A bilateral total temporomndibular joint reconstruction (using patient-fitted prostheses) due to severe arthritis in the joints and her 6th endoscopic sinus surgery due to chronic rhinosinusitis.

The TMJ replacement surgery is not an easy one and has a long recovery. She will have braces on and

they will be wired together with bands, as she recovers they loosen the bands to allow more movement. She was told she would only be able to get nutrition through a syringe for the first 6 weeks then back to liquids until she can begin to slowly have soft foods after appx. 3 months. It’s a very long and hard recovery and even her protein drinks are very costly.

Courtney hasn’t eaten anything in over a year now, she’s been surviving on liquids and its been a challenge for her to get enough calories in because she can not tolerate any dairy so she’s been living off of plant based protein drinks and has lost a great deal of weight, she is now very underweight and often lightheaded.

Courtney hasn’t been able to work during this time and likely will not be able to work for a long while after the surgeries because she was told the recovery can be a full year and her job requires a lot of verbal communication. They are now living on one income which as you know is hard now a days but with three kids and a mortgage and car payments its been difficult. Insurance won’t cover the full amount (they cover less when its out of network/state) and because there’s 3 surgeries involved the cost will be very high. 

With this surgery and trip to MN for it they are facing having to pay close to a third (what the insurance doesn’t cover, out of network, out of state, etc) of what could end up being well over 200k in medical bills, airfare and a week in a hotel (she was told she has to stay in the hotel adjacent to the hospital for two nights before (pre-op testing) and for another week after her surgery because she has to wait a week before she can fly home) and all meals for Sothonn (her husband) while they’re there. Courtney tried to have the surgery done locally but it couldn’t be done in Maine and while Boston had a surgeon that could do it, there was an even longer wait time, up to another year which she can not wait that long with the weight she’s been losing.

Please help my daughter any amount will help, nothing is too small. Please share this to reach as many people as possible.

Thank you for helping, The Martin / Prak Family

This is all she can open her mouth…