Heather’s Brain Surgery

Hi everyone! If you know my sister Heather, you probably know that she is the most caring and fun person you will ever meet. What you may not know is that she will be undergoing brain surgery this month. Though Heather is pretty open about most things, she isn’t one to draw attention to herself, so she has kept this situation pretty private. But with the upcoming surgery and the costs that come along with it, we wanted to create a place for family and friends to donate and support Heather and her family through this journey.

A little backstory… About a year ago, Heather started to experience an increase in multiple long-term symptoms, like vertigo and headaches. She also started to have tingling and numbness in her hands and feet, tinnitus (ringing in the ears,) and muscle weakness. Throughout the year, her symptoms progressively got worse, and multiple episodes sent her to the doctor. Her blood work and work up looked normal, which prompted her primary care doctor to send her to an ENT. The ENT ordered a brain MRI to rule out MS, where it was revealed that Heather instead has what is called a Type 1 Chiari Malformation (a condition where her brain is too large for her skull, making it protrude into the spinal cord.) It also showed that there was a partial blockage of her cerebral spinal fluid. Though some people can have mild cases without noticing throughout their lives, Heather saw a specialist in Seattle who said that her case was significant and needed surgery.

During this time, Heather also unexpectedly had to leave her career of 15 years due to her son Carter’s mental health issues, which required him to be homeschooled. With this already being a financial transition for her family, she made the decision to keep her health insurance through her work due to needing extensive medical care in Seattle, and is now paying all COBRA costs out of pocket.

Heather will be having surgery in Seattle at Harborview on February 17th. In technical terms, she will be undergoing a decompression fossa with partial laminectomy and dura patch graft. In simple terms, the surgeons will take a piece of Heathers skull and spine out to make room for her brain. If everything goes as expected, she will be in the hospital for a few days and then can spend the rest of her recovery at home. Though Heather has many family members and friends that have stepped up to help during this difficult time, my family and I decided to create a GoFundMe to help her and her family financially, first and foremost, to take care of medical costs, travel, insurance premiums, prescriptions, etc. Anything given beyond that would be a gift to help the family with general monthly costs like groceries and bills.

Heather is always the optimist and is keeping her head up. She is keeping her faith at the forefront of this journey. She continues to crack jokes and enjoy her life every day, and she is very grateful to God that this condition is something that can be fixed and can allow her to continue to live her life to the fullest with her husband and kids.

We will be doing our best to keep everyone updated during this time, and our family is extremely grateful for everyone’s kind words and generous donations!