Help with Jon's medical expenses
Donation protected
Dear friends,
This is a difficult message to write for many reasons, the primary being how uncomfortable the thought of asking for financial help makes both Sophie and I. This is quite the blow to my pride, but in one sense I believe that one of the purposes of this whole journey has been to do just that, rid me of my pride. It has already humbled me in many ways. I have learned many lessons but perhaps this is the final frontier of the many lessons that I am meant to learn through this journey of illness.
Many of you already know what I’ve been dealing with over the past few years but many others have no clue. I have purposefully kept some people and some groups of people in the dark for varying reasons. One of those reasons has been to protect my conscience and to remain above reproach, so that it can never be said that I have taken advantage of my situation in the wrong way or had any kind of wrong motives to get anything from anyone. Keeping this from so many people for so long has been hard. I have to say that just putting the whole truth out there alone is lifting a weight off my shoulders. It is bringing a sigh of relief.
I’m going to get into quite some detail here since I believe I owe it to those who will consider helping us, but first I’ll give a quick summary of what I’m dealing with. To put it succinctly, for the past almost five years I have had some sort of internal bleeding problem. As of around May of 2017 it became very consistent and predictable. I lose a certain amount of blood in a certain amount of time, and for these last four years, literally the only thing keeping me alive are regular rounds of IV Iron infusions. If I were to stop these treatments I would probably die in about six months. That is the main symptom of the greater undiagnosed issue that I am dealing with. Now let me get into more of the details and tell you about how it all started.
I remember the day back in 2014 when I woke up with a pain that felt like a rock the size of my fist stuck in my gut. From then on the pain would come and go, sometimes bad, sometimes not too bad, but of course I never went to the doctor. I kept on like this for the next year or so and just got used to it, however, at one point, I began to bleed when I went to the bathroom. When exactly that started I don’t remember but I remember how scary it was. I finally went to the doctor. I had x-rays, ct-scans, and they found nothing. I was then referred to a gastroenterologist where I had to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy among many other tests. They also found nothing and offered no other kind of help. This was in 2015 and thinking nothing else of it I continued to live as if nothing was wrong. In 2016 I got engaged, started pastoring a church, got married, and then Sophie got pregnant with our first child.
Sophie knew very little of the issues that I was having, and at the time I was still very functional. I was not affected in any other way until 2017. It was probably around January of 2017 that I started to feel some serious effects, and around April-May is when it got bad. I was actually scared and felt like I was on the brink of a heart attack or something. I also kept it secret from my wife because I didn’t want to scare her, especially since she was already having the typical pregnancy thoughts about me dying all the time! When it was time for Leo to be born in May of 2017 I had convinced myself that as soon as my son was born, and I knew that he and my wife were healthy, I would immediately check myself into the ER. That’s how bad I felt and that’s how worried I was. Long story short, the birthing experience went nothing as planned so I did not feel at any point like leaving my wife and child to go take care of myself. So I kept it quiet for a little longer.
In July of 2017 we went on a wedding anniversary trip to D.C. but just a few days before that I finally decided to go to the doctor again, another gastroenterologist, a completely different practice than the one a year back. At this point I once again felt like I was going to have a heart attack or something. My heart would be racing at the lightest levels of activity, a simple walk felt like a sprint, and I had horrible headaches if I exerted myself a little too much. The doctor took some blood for labs and we took off for our trip. The trip was hard for those reasons, it was a great trip, but hard physically. When we visited the Lincoln Memorial I could only take a few steps up to the memorial at a time before I had to stop because my heart was racing so fast and my head was hurting so badly. We stayed for a few days and on the drive back home I got a phone call from my doctor himself who was telling me that I needed to go to the hospital immediately and needed emergency blood transfusions. I told him that it would have to wait because I was in DC and he explained the seriousness of my condition by telling me that my blood levels were near the point where my body would begin to shut down and cause major organ failure. For those that understand the medical side of it, my hemoglobin at the time of the blood draw was at 6.1 and was probably down in the 5’s at the time of the call. To put that in perspective, people die in the 5’s and 4’s.
What has followed from that point forward has been what has become the normal of my life since then. Iron infusions, blood transfusions, invasive tests...another round of colonoscopies, endoscopies, etc. In the last four years I’ve probably had around 8 blood transfusions and over 30 iron infusions. Many tests, multiple doctors, multiple specialists, different practices, and still no definitive answers. It has been a very hard road, a scary road at times. It has been heartbreaking to see my wife suffer with me. There is so much that has gone on in these last four years behind the scenes of this illness that I could write a book. So, it has been hard, but I do also want to take a second here and say that it has also been good, it has been really good in many ways and for many reasons, and for all of it, I give God the glory. Without Christ I’m not sure how I would have managed, how my marriage would have grown like it has. I have suffered and it has been hard and I have had ups and downs but through it all God has sustained me, has shown me much grace and favor. I have learned to be weak and to have Him as my strength. I have been taken off my high-horse and shown that I am a human being, and not an invincible god as our minds often make us out to be. I have been humbled and I have been shown my dependency on Him who sustains us and grants us our every breath. On one hand, I am thankful for this valley that I have been led through, but on the other, I’m ready and I’ve been ready to get out of it. I want to be healthy again, I want to feel good again and honestly I don’t even remember what that feels like.
Throughout this ordeal, there has always been some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. The most help I’ve received thus far has been from a practice in Atlanta, Progressive Medical, where they have doctors of Functional Medicine. Through this practice I came to believe that the source of my issues, and the bleeding, is food. Food which has caused my gut to be damaged, which has led to all the issues. And so I believe that I have what is called Hyper Food Sensitivity. I have also found a medical journal article where multiple subjects who had the same symptoms that I do, specifically the bleeding, were put on an Oligoantigenic diet which stopped the bleeding. I think this part will now make sense to many, especially my co-workers, who over the last few years have seen me trying diet after diet and each time my diets only last a few days or a week or two. This is why: at one point I tried an Oligoantigenic diet where I was only eating baked chicken, grapes, and cucumbers, and all my symptoms disappeared! The bleeding went away! For about two weeks, I did not bleed once. What has followed from then has been an attempt at making that diet more balanced, but every time I have tried to add more food to it, even if it is still very restricted and controlled, it has failed, and I keep bleeding. That is where I am currently at. I am convinced that the underlying issue is food related, but I feel like I am still missing some parts of the puzzle, and I have finally reached the point where I am tired of trying to do this myself, trying to be my own doctor. I stopped going to Progressive because for the short time that I was there they were covered under my insurance, but they soon-after stopped taking my insurance, and I also had a few issues with their philosophy of care.
With all my theories proving to be wrong, my issue is that I always have another theory after the last one. But the doctors that I trust are the most expensive. As I have been pondering lately, I have made the decision that nothing is more important right now than for me to try to get healthy. The time has come for me to show all my cards, stop being my own doctor, stop being proud, and come to you all and ask for help. That is why I am doing this now. Please allow me to discuss my job and address my coworkers for a second.
It is important for a Law Enforcement Officer to be fit for duty. From the description of my issues it certainly doesn’t sound like I am fit for duty. To all my coworkers reading this, though, I would ask, have you ever doubted my ability to do my job? I will say that perhaps some things which you have seen that might make me look lazy are probably not that, rather, they are calculated efforts to wisely manage the energy that I do have. I have to be that calculated, but it doesn’t mean I can’t run. In fact, I have ran alongside some of you when an alarm goes off or another emergency requires it. I keep up; I am just a little more out of breath than everyone else afterwards. I have gone hands-on with inmates when it has been necessary to do so. I am not afraid to do my job or to jump into a fight or do whatever it is that I have to do, but doing those things is more taxing on me than others, there is no denying that. I have to be calculated because the energy I have left after work I give all to my family. It’s usually within minutes of me walking in the door that my son is wanting to wrestle, and I am chasing and tickling, being a father, and a husband. I don’t allow my lack of energy to get in the way of those things, although sometimes it does. I
Even with my particular issues, however, I have been able to pass my physical fitness tests, and all my necessary qualifications and certifications each year. I do have to work hard for it, no doubt about it. I am confident that I can still do my job as a Deputy, and I believe I have shown that. I’ll add this as well, at the time of me typing this, there isn’t one single Deputy that I work with that knows that I have been going through all this during my whole time of employment with the Sheriff’s Office. I will also add this, I never lied about my condition to gain my employment. During my hiring process I was actually held up from getting hired by medical. I was honest about my condition to them, and ultimately they signed off and cleared me for active duty. I just didn’t tell those I work closest with and that has been hard, but now everyone will know. Additionally, a few days before starting this GoFundMe, I sat down with my superiors to give them a head-up, and to finally tell them what I have been dealing with. They have been extremely supportive and that too has also been a huge relief.
Back to my energy levels, this is also why I am no longer a Pastor. I’ve been very vague with some people when I’ve told them that I am no longer in the ministry, and this is the reason, my illness. At the time I stepped down I made the decision to do so because I felt I could only give enough energy to one, either the Sheriff’s Office or the church. Because the Sheriff’s Office allows me to better provide for my family, that's where I decided to focus my energy and I resigned from the pastorate. That is one of the hardest, and saddest decisions I have had to make, but my family comes first. I say that to say this as well, I stepped down from being a pastor because I felt I couldn’t properly carry out that duty. Had there ever been or if there comes a time where I feel like I am a liability to my fellow officers, I would have and will do the same. But again, for now, I am certain I can continue. I just hope that gives some level of assurance to my fellow officers.
So this now takes me to the reason for which I have started a GoFundMe. I was recently referred to a Doctor in Cumming, GA. Dr. Campbell of Campbell Family Medicine is a Double Board-Certified Physician and is referred to as the “Master of the Human Jigsaw Puzzle” by her staff. I recently had a complimentary appointment with her and she believes that she can get me back to a healthy state in six months. I am not one that is easily fooled and I am not impressed simply because she made that statement. She seemed to back it up with the way she understood the issues that I explained to her and her experience with them. I was very excited to make her my new doctor until, after that appointment, I found out the pricing.
Campbell Family Medicine is a cash-only concierge medical practice, and when the nurse told me that the membership fee to join is $7,000-$10,000. I quickly dismissed the idea knowing I could never afford that. On top of that, they only have a few remaining membership openings which they believe will fill up in a month’s time. There aren’t enough part-time gigs I could work to make the money that quickly.
Over the next few days, I had been praying and thinking about this opportunity, knowing that I can’t afford it, but also thinking that it could mean my health back in a few month’s time. That’s when the thought came to me, “What if I swallowed my pride and asked for help?” As I mentioned before, time is running out if I want to be taken on as a patient of this practice. A practice which could potentially save my life. So friends, I humbly come to you and ask for any help that you are willing to give. I truly will be honored and thankful for any help of any amount. To my Christian brothers and sisters, I also ask for your prayers and thank you for them. As far as the timeline, the membership is due some time in July, so I don’t have long.
Friends, the goal set here is $20,000 because $10,000 goes automatically to the membership fees for the practice. This will thankfully cover a range of preliminary tests, but the remaining $10,000 are for whatever tests are not covered and whatever medicines or supplements I need to get, or anything else health related that I might need to get healthy. For example, added food expenses, my infusions (which cost me out of pocket money every time) and/ or anything else that is strictly for medical purposes or my overall health goals. I promise that whatever is raised will be used appropriately, I can guarantee you my conscience would not let me do otherwise.
To those that are already helping in one way or another, thank you, and to those who after reading this will choose to help me in any way, thank you. Thank you for the prayers, the thoughts, the help, for sharing this post, for the friendships, ….just, thank you. The Lord has truly blessed me and I am undeserving of it all, but I am thankful.
Your friend,
Jon Hoffman
To Christ be all the glory.
This is a difficult message to write for many reasons, the primary being how uncomfortable the thought of asking for financial help makes both Sophie and I. This is quite the blow to my pride, but in one sense I believe that one of the purposes of this whole journey has been to do just that, rid me of my pride. It has already humbled me in many ways. I have learned many lessons but perhaps this is the final frontier of the many lessons that I am meant to learn through this journey of illness.
Many of you already know what I’ve been dealing with over the past few years but many others have no clue. I have purposefully kept some people and some groups of people in the dark for varying reasons. One of those reasons has been to protect my conscience and to remain above reproach, so that it can never be said that I have taken advantage of my situation in the wrong way or had any kind of wrong motives to get anything from anyone. Keeping this from so many people for so long has been hard. I have to say that just putting the whole truth out there alone is lifting a weight off my shoulders. It is bringing a sigh of relief.
I’m going to get into quite some detail here since I believe I owe it to those who will consider helping us, but first I’ll give a quick summary of what I’m dealing with. To put it succinctly, for the past almost five years I have had some sort of internal bleeding problem. As of around May of 2017 it became very consistent and predictable. I lose a certain amount of blood in a certain amount of time, and for these last four years, literally the only thing keeping me alive are regular rounds of IV Iron infusions. If I were to stop these treatments I would probably die in about six months. That is the main symptom of the greater undiagnosed issue that I am dealing with. Now let me get into more of the details and tell you about how it all started.
I remember the day back in 2014 when I woke up with a pain that felt like a rock the size of my fist stuck in my gut. From then on the pain would come and go, sometimes bad, sometimes not too bad, but of course I never went to the doctor. I kept on like this for the next year or so and just got used to it, however, at one point, I began to bleed when I went to the bathroom. When exactly that started I don’t remember but I remember how scary it was. I finally went to the doctor. I had x-rays, ct-scans, and they found nothing. I was then referred to a gastroenterologist where I had to have a colonoscopy and an endoscopy among many other tests. They also found nothing and offered no other kind of help. This was in 2015 and thinking nothing else of it I continued to live as if nothing was wrong. In 2016 I got engaged, started pastoring a church, got married, and then Sophie got pregnant with our first child.
Sophie knew very little of the issues that I was having, and at the time I was still very functional. I was not affected in any other way until 2017. It was probably around January of 2017 that I started to feel some serious effects, and around April-May is when it got bad. I was actually scared and felt like I was on the brink of a heart attack or something. I also kept it secret from my wife because I didn’t want to scare her, especially since she was already having the typical pregnancy thoughts about me dying all the time! When it was time for Leo to be born in May of 2017 I had convinced myself that as soon as my son was born, and I knew that he and my wife were healthy, I would immediately check myself into the ER. That’s how bad I felt and that’s how worried I was. Long story short, the birthing experience went nothing as planned so I did not feel at any point like leaving my wife and child to go take care of myself. So I kept it quiet for a little longer.
In July of 2017 we went on a wedding anniversary trip to D.C. but just a few days before that I finally decided to go to the doctor again, another gastroenterologist, a completely different practice than the one a year back. At this point I once again felt like I was going to have a heart attack or something. My heart would be racing at the lightest levels of activity, a simple walk felt like a sprint, and I had horrible headaches if I exerted myself a little too much. The doctor took some blood for labs and we took off for our trip. The trip was hard for those reasons, it was a great trip, but hard physically. When we visited the Lincoln Memorial I could only take a few steps up to the memorial at a time before I had to stop because my heart was racing so fast and my head was hurting so badly. We stayed for a few days and on the drive back home I got a phone call from my doctor himself who was telling me that I needed to go to the hospital immediately and needed emergency blood transfusions. I told him that it would have to wait because I was in DC and he explained the seriousness of my condition by telling me that my blood levels were near the point where my body would begin to shut down and cause major organ failure. For those that understand the medical side of it, my hemoglobin at the time of the blood draw was at 6.1 and was probably down in the 5’s at the time of the call. To put that in perspective, people die in the 5’s and 4’s.
What has followed from that point forward has been what has become the normal of my life since then. Iron infusions, blood transfusions, invasive tests...another round of colonoscopies, endoscopies, etc. In the last four years I’ve probably had around 8 blood transfusions and over 30 iron infusions. Many tests, multiple doctors, multiple specialists, different practices, and still no definitive answers. It has been a very hard road, a scary road at times. It has been heartbreaking to see my wife suffer with me. There is so much that has gone on in these last four years behind the scenes of this illness that I could write a book. So, it has been hard, but I do also want to take a second here and say that it has also been good, it has been really good in many ways and for many reasons, and for all of it, I give God the glory. Without Christ I’m not sure how I would have managed, how my marriage would have grown like it has. I have suffered and it has been hard and I have had ups and downs but through it all God has sustained me, has shown me much grace and favor. I have learned to be weak and to have Him as my strength. I have been taken off my high-horse and shown that I am a human being, and not an invincible god as our minds often make us out to be. I have been humbled and I have been shown my dependency on Him who sustains us and grants us our every breath. On one hand, I am thankful for this valley that I have been led through, but on the other, I’m ready and I’ve been ready to get out of it. I want to be healthy again, I want to feel good again and honestly I don’t even remember what that feels like.
Throughout this ordeal, there has always been some sort of light at the end of the tunnel. The most help I’ve received thus far has been from a practice in Atlanta, Progressive Medical, where they have doctors of Functional Medicine. Through this practice I came to believe that the source of my issues, and the bleeding, is food. Food which has caused my gut to be damaged, which has led to all the issues. And so I believe that I have what is called Hyper Food Sensitivity. I have also found a medical journal article where multiple subjects who had the same symptoms that I do, specifically the bleeding, were put on an Oligoantigenic diet which stopped the bleeding. I think this part will now make sense to many, especially my co-workers, who over the last few years have seen me trying diet after diet and each time my diets only last a few days or a week or two. This is why: at one point I tried an Oligoantigenic diet where I was only eating baked chicken, grapes, and cucumbers, and all my symptoms disappeared! The bleeding went away! For about two weeks, I did not bleed once. What has followed from then has been an attempt at making that diet more balanced, but every time I have tried to add more food to it, even if it is still very restricted and controlled, it has failed, and I keep bleeding. That is where I am currently at. I am convinced that the underlying issue is food related, but I feel like I am still missing some parts of the puzzle, and I have finally reached the point where I am tired of trying to do this myself, trying to be my own doctor. I stopped going to Progressive because for the short time that I was there they were covered under my insurance, but they soon-after stopped taking my insurance, and I also had a few issues with their philosophy of care.
With all my theories proving to be wrong, my issue is that I always have another theory after the last one. But the doctors that I trust are the most expensive. As I have been pondering lately, I have made the decision that nothing is more important right now than for me to try to get healthy. The time has come for me to show all my cards, stop being my own doctor, stop being proud, and come to you all and ask for help. That is why I am doing this now. Please allow me to discuss my job and address my coworkers for a second.
It is important for a Law Enforcement Officer to be fit for duty. From the description of my issues it certainly doesn’t sound like I am fit for duty. To all my coworkers reading this, though, I would ask, have you ever doubted my ability to do my job? I will say that perhaps some things which you have seen that might make me look lazy are probably not that, rather, they are calculated efforts to wisely manage the energy that I do have. I have to be that calculated, but it doesn’t mean I can’t run. In fact, I have ran alongside some of you when an alarm goes off or another emergency requires it. I keep up; I am just a little more out of breath than everyone else afterwards. I have gone hands-on with inmates when it has been necessary to do so. I am not afraid to do my job or to jump into a fight or do whatever it is that I have to do, but doing those things is more taxing on me than others, there is no denying that. I have to be calculated because the energy I have left after work I give all to my family. It’s usually within minutes of me walking in the door that my son is wanting to wrestle, and I am chasing and tickling, being a father, and a husband. I don’t allow my lack of energy to get in the way of those things, although sometimes it does. I
Even with my particular issues, however, I have been able to pass my physical fitness tests, and all my necessary qualifications and certifications each year. I do have to work hard for it, no doubt about it. I am confident that I can still do my job as a Deputy, and I believe I have shown that. I’ll add this as well, at the time of me typing this, there isn’t one single Deputy that I work with that knows that I have been going through all this during my whole time of employment with the Sheriff’s Office. I will also add this, I never lied about my condition to gain my employment. During my hiring process I was actually held up from getting hired by medical. I was honest about my condition to them, and ultimately they signed off and cleared me for active duty. I just didn’t tell those I work closest with and that has been hard, but now everyone will know. Additionally, a few days before starting this GoFundMe, I sat down with my superiors to give them a head-up, and to finally tell them what I have been dealing with. They have been extremely supportive and that too has also been a huge relief.
Back to my energy levels, this is also why I am no longer a Pastor. I’ve been very vague with some people when I’ve told them that I am no longer in the ministry, and this is the reason, my illness. At the time I stepped down I made the decision to do so because I felt I could only give enough energy to one, either the Sheriff’s Office or the church. Because the Sheriff’s Office allows me to better provide for my family, that's where I decided to focus my energy and I resigned from the pastorate. That is one of the hardest, and saddest decisions I have had to make, but my family comes first. I say that to say this as well, I stepped down from being a pastor because I felt I couldn’t properly carry out that duty. Had there ever been or if there comes a time where I feel like I am a liability to my fellow officers, I would have and will do the same. But again, for now, I am certain I can continue. I just hope that gives some level of assurance to my fellow officers.
So this now takes me to the reason for which I have started a GoFundMe. I was recently referred to a Doctor in Cumming, GA. Dr. Campbell of Campbell Family Medicine is a Double Board-Certified Physician and is referred to as the “Master of the Human Jigsaw Puzzle” by her staff. I recently had a complimentary appointment with her and she believes that she can get me back to a healthy state in six months. I am not one that is easily fooled and I am not impressed simply because she made that statement. She seemed to back it up with the way she understood the issues that I explained to her and her experience with them. I was very excited to make her my new doctor until, after that appointment, I found out the pricing.
Campbell Family Medicine is a cash-only concierge medical practice, and when the nurse told me that the membership fee to join is $7,000-$10,000. I quickly dismissed the idea knowing I could never afford that. On top of that, they only have a few remaining membership openings which they believe will fill up in a month’s time. There aren’t enough part-time gigs I could work to make the money that quickly.
Over the next few days, I had been praying and thinking about this opportunity, knowing that I can’t afford it, but also thinking that it could mean my health back in a few month’s time. That’s when the thought came to me, “What if I swallowed my pride and asked for help?” As I mentioned before, time is running out if I want to be taken on as a patient of this practice. A practice which could potentially save my life. So friends, I humbly come to you and ask for any help that you are willing to give. I truly will be honored and thankful for any help of any amount. To my Christian brothers and sisters, I also ask for your prayers and thank you for them. As far as the timeline, the membership is due some time in July, so I don’t have long.
Friends, the goal set here is $20,000 because $10,000 goes automatically to the membership fees for the practice. This will thankfully cover a range of preliminary tests, but the remaining $10,000 are for whatever tests are not covered and whatever medicines or supplements I need to get, or anything else health related that I might need to get healthy. For example, added food expenses, my infusions (which cost me out of pocket money every time) and/ or anything else that is strictly for medical purposes or my overall health goals. I promise that whatever is raised will be used appropriately, I can guarantee you my conscience would not let me do otherwise.
To those that are already helping in one way or another, thank you, and to those who after reading this will choose to help me in any way, thank you. Thank you for the prayers, the thoughts, the help, for sharing this post, for the friendships, ….just, thank you. The Lord has truly blessed me and I am undeserving of it all, but I am thankful.
Your friend,
Jon Hoffman
To Christ be all the glory.
Organizer
Jonathan Hoffman
Organizer
Pendergrass, GA