Hi! My name is Kayla, and I thought I would share a bit about my family's situation. I do hope you read until the end. First off, I want to start by telling you how I ended up here. I had a friend ask why we haven't set up a type of donation so people could help relieve some financial stress off of us during this time, and the only answer I had was we don't ask for help easily. She then pointed out it wasn't as much as asking for help as it was telling our story, and if people felt led to help financially or spiritually sending prayers up then that was up to them. Basically, we weren't asking, and that made a little sense to me. :) Now for the reason I'm here...

My husband Josh had a massive heart attack at age 41 and less than 48 hours later went into a very high-risk surgery to remove his large intestine. It started at his regular GI doctor's appointment. While seeing her, he was very sick feeling, and she called an ambulance to come get him. Since the EMT mentioned his heart line was irregular, the ER doctor had him do a heart cath to make sure it was just due to him losing blood and heart overworking as a precaution just to make sure nothing else was going on. Turned out he was actively having a heart attack and had been for 3 days. His RCA was 100% blocked so he had 2 stents put in. Within 24 hours, his abdominal area was hurting so bad with no explanation. Eventually, the ICU doctor ordered a CT scan, and that is when the Trauma Surgeon came to see us, and we learned of the high-risk situation we were going into. The surgeon approved pain meds needed to get through the night in order for family to come in. He was receiving morphine and fentanyl (I don't know the spelling actually) every 20 minutes and was still in the fetal position in agonizing pain. Now this surgery, generally, is not a high risk, but due to his recent heart attack leading to stents being put in, etc it made it the highest high risk possible. So much so, they had me call in our children and family to see him as there was a strong chance he wouldn't make it through. But, God showed up and boy, did He show out! He made it through and came out on a ventilator. Now he has had severe UC for a long time, but over the last year we had found a medicine that kept it almost nonexistent when it came to symptoms. For those who are familiar know that it can be very painful when there is a flare-up, but when your flare-up goes on for weeks, even months, it can be absolutely agonizing. Lots happened over the last couple of months leading up to this, but it all started with losing his insurance. His meds without any insurance was $11,000, and once I added him to my insurance, it was still $3,200. Regardless, by the time I got him added and approved, he had already lost so much weight and lost so much blood, it was as if he was too far gone to get on the mend. And that is where we are today.

He is officially off the ventilator and has moved to a regular room. We are learning to care for his colostomy bag as well as him being in a "heart vest" for the next 3 months. Apparently, it monitors your heart rhythm and if it gets irregular, it can shock you. Basically a mobile defibrillator. Regardless, we have physical rehab, cardiac rehab, follow up apps, new medical equipment, you name it coming up once we get out of the hospital. That's on top of the hospital stay as well as an earlier visit this month that wasn't a full day and was $27,000. Our oldest and his wife have been caring for our other 3 children so I could be with him in the hospital out of town so neither of us are working right now, and we are trying to help them with groceries, gas, whatever they need while keeping his siblings. Let me say, they really stepped up during this time. I've exhausted all of my PTO so we are in uncharted territory. If you don't feel led to give financially, please send up a little prayer for our little family during this time. If you made it this far. Thank you for listening to our story.