Help David & Wanda with Hospital Bills
Hi, my name is Andrew, and I'm fundraising for my parents, David & Wanda Campbell. The past six years have been a bit of a rollercoaster of health issues for my family. While we have been blessed with support from friends and family (both financial and volunteered time), the past few months have been especially hard on my parents; for the first time, they are willing to set aside their pride, and ask for help from a wider audience.
The Current Situation (Reader's Digest or TLDR; version)
On April 5, 2021, David was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Since then, he has been undergoing a myriad of treatments and procedures to address some of his other health concerns that are keeping him from being added to the transplant list. This has included several hospitalizations, and treatment from several specialists. In the meantime, Wanda is doing all that she can to be a supportive wife, including taking time off from work during David's procedures. As complications have come up, she has found herself taking unpaid leave; while her employer is generous and very understanding, Wanda's short time with her current employer limits her opportunity for paid leave. While they are fortunate to have health insurance, the level of hospitalization David has recently required has put a significant strain on their ability to handle the out of pocket medical expenses they have encountered. This has been exasperated by unexpected costs, like hospital doctors being out of network, and extended hospitalizations resulting from miscommunications amongst medical staff. Wanda and David are looking for help to ensure they can handle the out of pocket expenses required by their insurance, paying for new prescription medications, and other medical supplies needed to care for David at home.
Six Years of Sorrows
Always be prepared for an emergency, right? The popular advice is to have six months worth of income saved up to handle emergencies. That doesn't seem unreasonable, but what happens when you hit a six year run of emergencies? That's essentially the situation in which my parents currently find themselves, and why they're looking for help now. Below, I've done my best to reconstruct the chain of events that has brought things to the current state.
Losing Your Mother
Early in 2015, Wanda's mother, Angela Mech, was diagnosed with colon cancer. Despite an initially optimistic prognosis, a follow-up surgery found that the cancer had metastasized. Angela was discharged from the hospital and entered in-home hospice care. Given the circumstances, Wanda took an unpaid leave of absence from work to help care for her dying mother, and ensure that her last months of life were as comfortable as possible, and filled with love and joy.
Wanda's Debilitating Back Pain
Wanda was initially planning on undergoing back surgery in early 2015 to address concerns that were beginning to negatively impact her mobility. While she had managed dealing with having five herniated disks in her lower lumbar for years, new symptoms emerged, resulting in a diagnosis of degenerative disk disease. Wanda dealt with chronic pain, and abnormal experiences resulting from the pinched nerves in her spine; for instance, at one point, her feet constantly felt like they were submerged in water. Of course, when Wanda's mother received a terminal cancer diagnosis, the back surgery was put on hold, so that Wanda could care for her mother.
After Angela passed away in June of 2015, Wanda returned to work, and started planning when she would schedule her back surgery; however, Wanda's manager discouraged taking leave for the surgery, since she had just returned to work. As a result, Wanda put off the surgery until December of 2015. By this time, Wanda was barely still capable of walking, and required a more sophisticated surgery than what had originally been prescribed. Unfortunately, the surgery was not entirely successful. Afterward, Wanda had to seek emergency medical care on several occasions to address nerve pain, and ultimately needed a follow-up surgery, when it was determined that the metal cage that had been placed around her 360 fusion had collapsed.
David's Heart Attacks & Triple Bypass
In March of 2016, shortly after mom's second back surgery, David suffered a series of heart attacks, that led to his hospitalization. Initially, David didn't realize he was having heart attacks, and thought he was just dealing with bouts of light-headedness. In a somewhat fortunate turn of events, the heart attacks resulted in pulmonary distress, and it was these pneumonia like symptoms that led David and seek medical help.
Once diagnosed, David underwent a triple bypass at the Medical Center of Arlington. While the bypass surgery was a success, David spent weeks dealing with other issues that resulted from the surgery. David suffered from severe leg pain, and spent several weeks receiving antibiotics via a picc line, under the care of an infectious disease doctor who diagnosed David's leg pain as resulting from an infection. David did end up in ICU as a result of an infection in his leg, where they had harvested vein for the transplant, but the actual cause of the leg pain turned out to be a vascular issue, which required additional compression treatment.
David's New Leg Pain
David eventually recovered from the bypass surgery and the issues that affected his leg afterward, but in late 2018, David began experiencing new pains in his leg. This time, instead of vascular problems, David's pain was neurological; it was determined David was suffering due to a pinched nerve, and that a slipped vertebrae had actually cut into the outer layer of his spinal cord. In December of 2018, David had back surgery to address these issues. On the bright side, the surgery addressed the pain David was experiencing, but unfortunately, not in the way any of us had hoped; David lost feeling in most of his right leg.
Financial Struggles
Shortly before David's back surgery, Wanda was laid off from her job at AT&T. Fortunately, as part of her severance, she was able to retain her health insurance at employee rates for six months, which was what allowed for David to have his back surgery in the first place. Nevertheless, the next few years saw several financial complications. First, Wanda lost her job. David was still working, but his own health issues limited his income, and he did not have access to insurance through his work. Furthermore, given his existing health concerns, once the Coronavirus pandemic became a major concern, David effectively stopped working. Wanda was unemployed from November of 2018, until July 0f 2020, and even then, her new employment involved hiring as a contractor, which meant she was not eligible for benefits, until she was offered a fulltime position in February of 2021.
David's Continued Health Issues
David had been struggling with various health issues over the past couple of years, but because he and Wanda did not have access to health insurance, they essentially tried to just deal with anything that wasn't an emergency. David was able to maintain his prescription medications, but was not able to see a doctor due to concerns over cost-prohibitive medical bills. With that in mind, when David starting having issues with swelling and pain in his legs again, he focused on what he could: pain management. As soon as they had access to insurance again, Wanda started scheduling medical appointments for David, so they could start to address the pain and swelling; however, a laundry list of routine exams was slowing things down, and resulted in a circle of problems.
We all realized that the swelling that David was experiencing was likely a cardiovascular concern, so that was Wanda's first area of concern, but there was also a call for David to have a routine colonoscopy. When it came time for David to meet with the internist for his colonoscopy, they expressed concern about David's legs and whether his heart was healthy enough to undergo the twilight anesthesia that was needed for the colonoscopy. Before this could be resolved, David's health took a turn for the worse.
On March 18, 2021, Wanda called 911, because David's blood pressure was 75 over 30. After the bad experiences that they had encountered at MCA, Wanda demanded that the paramedics take David to Methodist Mansfield. Given David's symptoms, especially the blood pressure and the swelling in his legs, the doctors at Methodist emphasized cardiovascular care, and adjusted David's medications to hopefully address his blood pressure and the swelling in his legs. From that point, everything was falling into place to focus on cardiovascular care for David, but despite introducing new medications and treatments, David's health continued to decline.
On April 5, 2021, Wanda took David back to the Emergency Department at Methodist Mansfield; it appeared that the swelling in David's legs had gotten even worse, and his blood pressure had dropped again. On this visit, new information came to light: David was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. At that time, the doctors also believed David was suffering from congestive heart failure, and acute kidney injury, but those were eventually ruled out, as it became evident that his liver failing to function appropriately was triggering symptoms related to his heart and kidneys. As much as that may have been good news, the bad news was still catastrophic - David's liver was damaged beyond repair, and he will need a transplant to survive.
David was at Methodist Mansfield for two weeks, as the doctors fought to relieve his symptoms. His hemoglobin dropped as low as 5.3 (normal range for a man of his age is 12.4 - 14.9). David spent the first few days in ICU, receiving blood transfusions, just so they could get his hemoglobin back up to 7. In addition to low hemoglobin, David was also dealing with low sodium, which can lead to a host of other complications. On top of all that, David was also suffering from fluid retention, resulting in swelling in his legs, and around his abdomen. When he had arrived at the hospital, he weighed in at 224 pounds, but after 3 rounds of paracentesis, in combination with the other treatments, David's weight dropped down to 191. At any rate, after two weeks, they were able to get his hemoglobin and sodium up to acceptable levels, and released him into rehab, so he could have physical therapy. David spent 10 days at the rehab center, before being released. The next step would be to determine what options were available to David, and what was necessary for him to get a place on the wait list for a transplant.
Improving David's Odds
In order to qualify for the transplant list, David has to address several issues, so that he can be considered a viable candidate. One of the primary concerns was David's use of alcohol. While alcohol had played a role in David's health, several of the doctors that Wanda has talked to have pointed out that the medications that David has been on since his triple bypass have likely accelerated the damage to his liver, leading to the current state. After the pain that David has experienced, he was quick to commit to sobriety. If it means never feeling this pain again, he's happy to quit drinking. While a period of sobriety, and clear dedication to staying sober will help him earn a place on the transplant list, there are still other medical concerns that need to be addressed: chief among these was finding and treating any arterial blockages in David's leg, which was the anticipated culprit behind his leg pain and swelling.
The first step was a simple outpatient operation. David was scheduled to have angioplasty on June 3rd, 2021; however, it turned out that this method would not be sufficient to solve the problem. The blockage in David's leg was too significant, so the next thing we knew, David was being scheduled for periphery arterial bypass surgery. Initially, the surgery was scheduled on July 9th at Methodist Mansfield, but an opportunity for an earlier surgery date presented itself at MCA. Wanda and David were hesitant to accept the earlier date, because of the negative experiences they previously had at MCA, but David's pain seemed to be getting worse, every day, so they took the earlier date, despite their apprehension.
David went in for the arterial bypass on June 16th, and the surgery was executed with no issues. The surgeon expected that David would be free to go home within a couple of days, but that was not to be the case. Although the surgery had gone well, David's recovery was rough from the very beginning. Between anesthesia and pain management, David received a combination of morphine, fentanyl, and Ativan. We are still uncertain whether there was an issue with dosage, or if David has a sensitivity to one of these medications, but David was struggling to wake from the surgical fog. His O2 saturation dropped as low as 24, while Wanda and nurses tried to shake him awake to keep breathing. David was placed on a bipap machine for 7 hours, and treated with Narcan to neutralize the opioids in his system.
It was a relief to get David breathing on his own again, but that wasn't the end of it. David's hemoglobin and sodium were once again starting to drop into dangerous territory. Poor communication among the doctors treating David, as well as issues with the nursing staff at MCA contributed to additional complications over the course of nearly two weeks that David wound up being at MCA. Given these circumstances, there was significant difficulty in trying to stabilize David's hemoglobin and sodium. To make matters more interesting, the swelling around his abdomen was become worse again. After leaving the rehab hospital, David's weight had eventually dropped down to 176, but in the course of time that he was in the hospital, his weight rose to 208. After nearly two weeks of increasing complications, and an ever-growing pile of issues with the doctors and staff, Wanda started pushing to have David transferred to Methodist Mansfield. The caseworker at MCA promised to execute the transfer as soon as possible. By the next morning, the doctor's at MCA concluded that David's vitals were good enough to discharge him, and send him home. At the time, Wanda was happy just to be getting him home, but was already making plans to take him to Methodist Mansfield as soon as possible to make sure everything was okay.
David got almost a whole week at home. He had been discharged from MCA on June 29th, 2021. On July 2nd, 2021, David went to Quest diagnostic for routine bloodwork for the Liver Institute, in anticipation of a scheduled appointment on July 8th. On Saturday morning, David received a call from the Liver Institute, asking that he report to the Emergency Department at Methodist Dallas, because his sodium level was back down do a dangerous level. He was assured that it would be something they could deal with that day, and at the very worst, he'd be there overnight for observation. David managed to visit his youngest granddaughter's first birthday party, knowing that he would be leaving to head straight to the hospital, so they could try to get his sodium back up.
As of today, David is still at Methodist Dallas. His hemoglobin is up to 7.5, and his sodium is up to 123. The abdominal swelling is also getting back under control, and his weight is down to 183.2.
We are holding out hope that David will be able to get on the transplant list. We know that there is a lot to be done to get him to a point of being eligible, and it's going to take more time with doctors and hospitals, and despite being insured, it's going to be a costly endeavor. For this reason, we're reaching out to all of you for your help.
Personally, I'd give just about anything for my girls to have more time with David. Just the other day, my eldest daughter, Genevieve, was talking about how when she's older, Dzia Dzia (a nickname for grandpa in Polish) was going to teach her how to work on cars. The mere thought that her expectation may be downright impossible just about had me in tears. This gofundme is to ask you for help in taking care of the medical expenses associated with David's care. We also ask you to pray for David, for his health to continue to improve, and for him to eventually get a place on the transplant list.
Thank you so much for your consideration, and God bless.