Help Nate get to Cleveland Clinic!

Hi there. My name is Nate. You may also know me as Avi. Either way it goes, I have a lot of health problems. They all started about 2 years ago, when I got COVID for the first time, in January of 2023. I developed Long COVID (LC) and I spent 4 months out of work because of it. My LC doctor, my primary care doctor, and several of my specialists are 100% certain that there's something other than "Just LC." Nobody can figure out what, though, and they're running out of ideas. My doctors have been grasping at straws for over a year, barely any closer to answers than we were when this all started. I did get diagnosed with both anemia and sleep apnea, so I've had iron infusions a few times and I have a CPAP (whose name is Oswald). There's something else there, though. We just don't know what.

That's why my doctors all agree it's a good idea for me to go to Cleveland Clinic, somewhere with more resources that may have more insight into what could be wrong with me. I started the process of becoming a patient with Cleveland Clinic about 6 weeks ago, and I now have a MyChart and several appointments scheduled for October 1-3. I need to fly from Chicago to Cleveland on September 30th, and I need to fly home on October 4th. I want to stay in one of the hotels on the Cleveland Clinic campus so that I wouldn't have to worry about transportation while I'm there. I'll also probably need to be off the meds that more or less keep me some level of functional, so it would be nice to be able to have somewhere to rest between appointments.

The hotel, for 4 nights, is about $950, as rates currently stand. Plane tickets will run between $250-$300. I'll also need to pay for food while there. I don't anticipate having the energy to do anything outside of the appointments, so I'm not worried about entertainment costs or anything.

Of course, I'm trying to save money from each paycheck. So far, I have about $120 set aside, but that's only a fraction of what I'll need. We're still financially recovering from my partner being unemployed for a year and a half, so saving is VERY difficult.

Hopefully this will all be worth it and they're able to get me feeling at least a little better.

Thanks for reading :)