Medical Emergency

Co-organized

Penni Borga and Chris Balser are organizing this fundraiser.

Donation protected

My name is Penni, and I'm setting this up for my husband Chris Balser.

Let's start with the beginning, so hold on tight because this is a long and bumpy ride!

Chris was born in Germany because his dad was stationed there for the Army. His parents began to notice that Chris could eat more than a grown man, and he was still LOSING weight. They took him to the doctorS multiple times, and the doctorS continued to them that it was just a growth spurt. Chris' family came back to US, and at the age 5 yrs was diagnosed with Type 1 Insulin Dependent Diabetes.

Fast forward 13 yrs, Chris (18 yrs) is able to take care of his diabetes on his own. With doing so, he became fed up with having the diagnosis and wasn't getting the insulin he needed. He was in the hospital either every other day to every day with high blood sugars going into or was in DKA.

The next couple years went on with him being in and out of the hospital, until he turned 21yrs. That's when Chris and I met through a mutual friend. As time went on, he started to realize that our relationship was progressing, and we discussed how we wanted to grow old together, but that couldn't happen with the path he was on. He started doing self-care!! With him caring again, he hadn't been hospitalized for months.

2011 a lot happened, Chris proposed to me in July, and then we became Legal Guardians over 2 little girls who at the time were 1yrs and 2yrs, and now they are 9yrs (in 3rd grade) and 10yrs (in 5th grade).

Then in 2014, Chris and I were married. We were living life and life was good. We were finding our footing in parenting, and Chris was doing way better with self-care.

2017, Chris lost sight in his left eye due to lack of self-care in his younger yrs. We were lucky enough to have a cousin of Chris' that worked at an eye care facility that would process everything under medical instead of vision. Unfortunately, he had to have many surgeries to be able to see only blurred objects.

2018, Chris was in the ER with what we thought was DKA again. Turned out that he had 2 liters of fluid in each of his lungs. They pulled the fluid out, and he felt better. He was released and the next day saw both his primary and diabetic doctor's assistant. He finally heard news that he had been waiting for since he was young... he could get an Insulin Pump!

He has only now been in the hospital once a year because he has problems with Upper Respiratory Infections. January 2020, Chris was in the hospital again for URI, uncontrollable shakes, fever, BP in the 140-200, BS going low (30-100) then high (200-over 600), not eating well, and nauseous. They took viles and viles of blood to try and figure out what was wrong. They were baffled as to what was wrong, but that's when we received bad news. We found out that Chris was/is in Stage 5 Chronic Kidney Failure. He had less then 10% kidney function (and decreasing every day- he was 5% when discharged) which explained most of what was going on.

That's what brings us to why Chris (and we his family) need your help! To be able to get on the Kidney/Pancreas Transplant List . He has to have all his teeth pulled because his gums have infections, and his jaw bone grinded down for dentures to fit. Once all the teeth are pulled and the infection is gone, he will be placed on the transplant list (infections of any sort can potentially be harmful when the doctors use anesthesia).