Help Joey On His Path To Recovery From Huge Medical Issues

On August 8th, Joey's dad Steve noticed he wasn't looking well. He had been in bed for two days and hadn't eaten anything. Steve called 911 and Joey was rushed to a hospital in Orlando.

Upon arrival, they performed a CAT scan and determined that Joey had had a stroke. They immediately admitted him for supervision and further testing.

The next day, we were informed that he had; in fact, had two strokes due to a hole in his heart that he was born with that has gone undetected. Everyone has this hole in utero, but it closes upon the first breath for about 80% of the population. Some people go on to live a healthy life; not knowing that they have a hole in their heart, some people have a stroke at the age of 60 or 70, and a very rare few have a stroke in their youth.

On the 10th, upon more invasive testing, they realized that Joey had five strokes. There is no way to tell when the previous four had occurred, but the 5th was one was when we had admitted him.

The plan the staff came up with on Friday was to transfer Joey from the hospital we were in to a hospital a few miles away that's specialized in cardiac care on Monday morning. They decided he needed a procedure to close the hole in his heart and stop further strokes from occurring as soon as possible. They told him he had to just hang tight because it was the weekend. They'd transfer him Monday morning for the procedure to close up the hole in his heart, and he would be transferred directly to the inpatient rehabilitation facility from there. The plan was to spend two to three weeks in the inpatient rehabilitation facility and then he'd go home.

Over that weekend, Joey took it upon himself to perform his own rehabilitation with a quickness. He started doing laps around his hospital floor and doing push-ups and climbing stairs. By Monday morning, he had already graduated from the inpatient rehabilitation center before even stepping foot in it.

They discharged him from the hospital to his home on the evening of the 12th with plans for him to do outpatient PT and to close the hole on the 30th and all would be good again...

Only we didn't make it that long...

On the 20th of August, I took the day off work to help Joey with his doctor appointments. While running our errands, he had three very violent seizures in my car. Thankfully, we were close to the ER and I got him there quickly.

Within hours of arrival, he began to vomit copious amounts of blood and soon became unresponsive. They immediatly started his first form of life support via a lead line in his artery to keep his blood pressure from crashing. Shortly after that, they had to emergency intubate him, he was in a medically induced coma and was being kept alive by machines.

They found a significant bleed in his abdomen that was almost impossible to close. It took days to get him stable. He had thirteen blood transfusions.

When they attempted to turn of the ventilator the first time, they had to turn it back on within ten minutes because he would only breathe when I reminded him to. He remained on life support until the 25th and was discharged on the 28th.

They had to put a pacemaker in because it turns out those seizures he had in my car were actually his heart stopping several times; once for nearly 20 seconds.

He is still very prone to have more stokes. They can't close the hole until he heals form the pacemaker. They can't give him the medicine to prevent a stroke because it's a blood thinner and he is still high risk for an internal bleed. We are walking a very fine line.

This entire ordeal has wiped out his savings, between not being able to work this month and generate an income to all the medical bills he is incurring as well as prescriptions, copays, etc...

If he can pay off the medical bills that are IMMEDIATELY important and can catch up on his rent, it would help more than you could imagine!

If you can't afford to donate, please share this.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for all of your love and prayers for my family during this time!

Please keep em comin!

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