Hello, my name is Linda Howard and Noah Howard is my brother-in-law. We call him Chicken, my girls named him that years ago and it just stuck.

Fundraising for Noah is important to me because he does everything on his own. He's very independent, which is great and we're all proud of him for doing life his way. But this time he shouldn't have to do this all on his own, he deserves love and support and I just pray this can give him a bit of that.

Here's an idea of what he's going to be billed for:

With that being said, we aren't sure of the exact bills yet (and won't know for up to 2 weeks.) So we thought 20k is a good starting point.

This is Noah's story as I know it.

In mid-November 2022 Noah moved from Coeur d'Alene, ID to near Bozeman, MT for a job as a cook at a ski resort. This put him about 5+ hours from home and family, for the first time. We're all so proud of him for chasing his dreams and stepping out of his comfort zone!

Fast forward to Saturday, January 14th, 2023 when his medical problems started. He had pain in his throat. Between Friday, January 20th, 2023 and the 21st he went to urgent care, had a phone call with urgent care and visited ER. He was looking for help and they didn't help him.

For 5 days he got little nutrition, almost no sleep, and had increasing pain. He was in near 10/10 pain when swallowing. Finally, Monday night going into Tuesday morning he hit the point of throwing up, he got no sleep and was experiencing hallucinations. He drove himself to the ER at 3:30AM and by 4:30AM his mother was called and heading out on the 5 hour trip to her son in the ICU. They finally took him seriously.

They diagnosed him with epiglottitis. According to mayoclinic.org "Epiglottitis happens when the epiglottis — a small cartilage "lid" that covers the windpipe — swells. The swelling blocks the flow of air into the lungs. Epiglottitis can be deadly. Many factors can cause the epiglottis to swell."

From Tuesday January 24th to Friday January 27th Noah was in the ICU, finally getting the care he needed. They gave him pain meds, antibiotics, and steroids. They took scans and tests. After a CT scan it was discovered he had 2 abscesses in his throat. He was visited by ENT (Ear Nose and Throat) doctors and infectious disease doctors. After a couple days hoping the medication would decrease the size of the abscesses nothing changed. That's when they went in for a drainage procedure which was sucessful and they released him that day.

Now he's on 2 weeks of antibiotics and will have checkups and possible scans to make sure the abscesses completely heal and disappear.

Noah is not insured, he was given paperwork to apply for help through the hospital but he's not positive he'll qualify. So I'd love to get the ball rolling on these medical expenses, on top of this lost wages.

Please pray for complete healing and rapid weight/strength gain.

If you are local to us, please feel free to reach out to donate in person too.