Help Jenna pay her expensive SCDS medical bills!

Hi everyone, my name is Karla, and I am fundraising for our beloved friend Jenna who is going through a lot of stressful and expensive medical issues right now. Jenna has worn many hats over the years, including yoga instructor, nanny, birth doula, and crisis hotline counselor. After serving her community for so long, she needs our help. While pursuing her next goal of becoming a registered nurse, Jenna was diagnosed with a rare health condition that turned her world upside down.

Superior canal dehiscence syndrome (SCDS) is caused by an abnormal opening in the uppermost canal of the vestibule of the inner ear. Essentially, there’s a hole, or holes in some cases, in the bone that separates the brain from the inner ear, allowing the brain to bulge into the ear. You can read more about this rare condition here: when your eyeballs become audible

SCDS is a rare disorder, and only a few centers have extensive experience with its diagnosis and treatment. Due to insurance limitations, Jenna wasn’t able to go to these centers for her first attempt at treatment. Instead, she had surgery at UF Health and, unfortunately, the surgery left her worse than before.

Her symptoms include extreme fatigue, nausea, dizziness, vertigo, brain fog, memory issues, derealization, anxiety, pulsatile and non-pulsatile tinnitus, extreme sensitivity to sound and light, and auditory symptoms such as hearing her eyeballs move.

She passed her boards in September of 2021 and is officially a registered nurse, but she has not yet been able to begin working because of the severity of her symptoms after her failed surgery in November of 2021:

Jenna had so much hope for that surgery, but it ended up leaving her worse off than before. In a life update in her social media she described it:

"... I wish I had better news. Unfortunately, the surgery hasn’t solved any of my problems. Instead, it has piled a few more onto my plate. My original auditory symptoms included autophony (hearing eyeball, neck, and arm movements as well as digestive sounds), hyperacusis (extreme sensitivity to sound), and intermittent tinnitus. Original cognitive symptoms included memory problems, brain fog, anxiety and eventually derealization. Motion intolerance was pretty much the extent of my vestibular issues and I was able to avoid that symptom pretty well by always being the driver, not sitting on swings, etc..."

She recently got new health insurance and is now seeing Dr. Carey at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, the hospital where SCDS was discovered and its treatment was pioneered. She will be required to take a minimum total of 4 trips to Baltimore over the course of 4 months for testing, surgery, and follow-up visits. For surgery (scheduled for October), she will need to stay in Baltimore for 10+ days, and recovery will take months, during which time she will not be able to work.

Your donations will go towards:

-surgery

-vestibular physical therapy

-flights to and from Baltimore

-living expenses

Jenna's new surgery is scheduled for October 13, only a few short weeks away! While this is very exciting, it is also super financially stressful for Jenna.

Jenna has gracefully navigated these symptoms while remaining a fantastic friend, dog mom, entrepreneur (check out her amazing and sustainable small business on Instagram: Retro Babes), nanny, and human being, despite having many days she couldn't even get out of bed. This condition has hit her finances hard, as she cannot work until her worst symptoms improve, which adds a lot of stress to an already difficult situation. Please consider helping her by donating to this campaign, but sharing the link on social media is another fantastic way to contribute. I will post updates and more photos on the campaign page so you can follow Jenna's progress and medical journey. For now, enjoy this sweet photo of Jenna resting with her furry companion, Mildred.