Help the Stahl family win Billy's medical war!!!

Hello all, I am Jennifer Drozdowicz-Stahl, the wife of Billy Stahl. I come to you with news, stories, some good and some bad, and proposed plans to help us win the health war he is fighting daily like the warrior he is.

The story begins in May of 2020 when God dropped Billy Stahl into my life, completely unexpected and definitely not searching. Our union was everything you see in movies and read about in books. It was something I never thought I would experience, but somehow, we both got blessed to share it together. Not everyone believes in love at first sight, so I will say it was the closest thing to it. It was not long before we decided together was the only place that we should be. In January 2021, we packed our entire lives into a moving truck and said goodbye to New York and hello to Fort Worth, Texas, to start our new life together. We temporarily set up shop; I obtained employment while Billy prepared to begin another journey of being a stay-at-home parent to my two newly teenage sons. After completing the last step of enrolling them in the school, the boys joined us, and our family was finally together again in April of 2021. For a couple of months, we happily strolled down the exact path we had planned. We were getting ready to make our last big step, moving out of our temporary residence into a permanent one. One day, everything was sunshine and roses; instead, it had all changed to dark clouds and storms.

It all changed in August of 2021. It was very quickly that Billy started not to feel or look well. Within a week of that, Billy was hospitalized, and the beginning of the war that Billy and my family are still battling today. Billy was diagnosed with the full-blown liver disease during his two-week hospital stay. You always hear about people struggling with life-threatening illnesses and how it affects them and their loved ones. Before Billy was released from the hospital, everything that we knew in our lives had to be rearranged. Billy's unemployment payments due to the Covid pandemic had just ended. It was made very clear to me that Billy was going to need 24-hour care from now on. I had promised Billy in the hospital that if he needed to be cared for at home, it would be me because those were his wishes. Unfortunately, I had to leave my employment to care for him and be a mother to my sons. We lost any opportunity to move into an apartment or home because no more income came in. In a heartbeat, we went from two incomes to none. We had to continue living in the extended stay and eventually exhausted all of our savings doing so. Besides obtaining immediate medical insurance for Billy and the family, I struggled to obtain any additional help through the state for families in similar situations. Many everyday symptoms of this disease include nausea, vomiting, extreme exhaustion, edema, abdominal pain, excessive itching, esophageal bleeding(which leads to procedure after procedure), and hepatic encephalopathy. Your liver is the organ that processes all the toxins or destructive enzymes out of your body. If your liver is failing or unable to function correctly, the toxins and enzymes cannot exit the body fast enough and make their way to the brain. Encephalopathy occurs when too many toxins reach the brain, which causes delirium, confusion, agitation, sleeplessness, and struggle with the simplest everyday tasks. This is one of the many reasons Billy needs someone home with him cause this can happen at any moment in time. He has been medicated and monitored by his doctor and specialist, and thank god those episodes are fewer and far between than they were a year ago.

Sorry for the small education session. Anyone unfamiliar with the disease, I just wanted everyone to understand some of what our daily struggles include. Back to the story and the reason for this page to begin with. Due to my family's incredible generosity and support, our rent has been covered over the past year, and our needs have been taken care of for myself, our sons, and Billy. On the upside, we have had some blessings as well. Over the year, Billy has been hospitalized five times, and I was told four of them, he was close to death. In December 2021, Billy was hospitalized with pneumonia and a staph infection in his blood. Not only did he come home to us, but he made our Christmas wish come true, and he made it home to us for Christmas! During that hospital stay, we were told he had about six weeks to live and to get our affairs in order. Well, were they wrong! It's been almost a year, and he is still going strong with us. In August of 2022, we were fortunate enough to meet a kind stranger who heard that we wanted to seal the deal, but finances were a huge issue and affording a Texas state marriage license just wasn't in the budget. Through the kindness of this stranger, she took us personally to obtain our marriage license, and two days later, we officially became Mr. and Mrs. Billy and Jennifer Stahl in the presence of a few close friends. Through even more generosity from my family, we finally moved out of the extended stay and into our first apartment. Unfortunately, my parents are retired and don't have money trees growing in their yards. All this help is also becoming a financial strain on them, and I would like to take that stress from them. Billy has been ruled 100 percent disabled and unable to return to work. We filed for disability a year ago and are fighting an uphill battle for an appeal due to state error.

I am humbly writing this for the peace and stability of our family. The doctors keep telling us that stress is one of the worst things for Billy at this stage. It increases the chance of encephalopathy and takes a toll on the body, which isn't favorable for his health. While we sit for months waiting for the state to sort out their paperwork errors, our situation remains the same. We have two sons to raise, four mouths to feed, monthly rent, and Billy's medical supplies that are not covered by insurance, and those are just the big ones. I watch Billy stress out daily, wondering how the rent will get paid and all of the above. I watch the anguish on his face. He even threatens to go out and find a job when he knows he cannot provide for the boys and me. Until our situation gets resolved, which could take six months, I want him to have a little peace knowing we are going to be okay, and if he is at peace, he knows I am at peace. I love my husband and sons more than anyone will ever know. I want to have as much time with them as possible and not live in a state of worry every minute of every day. If you think about our story has just begun! Thank you for reading and for any help you can give to help us get through this battle.