Help Jess with expenses due to hospitalization

UPDATES:

Jess had a good couple days. He’s much more lucid, but with that came the initial confusion again. He is still pretty emotional. It's hard to even imagine how confusing it would be to lose almost 10 days and wake up somewhere different than when you went to sleep. He’s realizing how much muscle mass and dexterity he lost. He’s ready to do the work to get home. He was able to get transferred to a room, so no more ICU! Yay! Keep praying for the strength to get through all this. It’s going to take a lot of strength and time to get him fully recovered. Our Mom let him know how much love is being sent his way and as many messages as she could. We are eternally grateful for all the support from each and every one of you! We love you.

All good things! ❤️❤️❤️ 3/4/2023

We are trying to raise funds for our parents for any medical bills, care expenses, utilities, food, etc.

Our dad, Jess, has been in renal failure since June 1, 2021 and has been waiting for a kidney donation since with no luck on a match thus far. He was a diabetic, but has had that under control for some time now. He eats exactly how the doctors directed and follows their instructions religiously. They have also both been working, fixing up their land and house they bought.

He's been fighting an infection the past 3 months (Common in dialysis patients). On February 14th, he had our mom take him in to the ER due to what felt like bad indigestion that just wouldn't subside, and his stomach was distended. Normally, he would take indigestion medicine and just wait it out, but it wasn't working and something just didn't feel right. They arrived at the ER and the hospital checked his heart and everything seemed fine. They then ran cultures and found a few different infections. He was admitted around midnight. Over the next couple days, he was treated in the hospital with several antibiotics and they seemed to be going away. While in there, they also continued his regular dialysis treatments. Because they couldn't identify the bacteria from the infections yet, they opted to keep him admitted. On February 20th, he had a particularly hard dialysis session with a lot of cramping and pain. He did not sleep much that night either. The next day, he was suffering from what he thought was indigestion and bloating. They tried to perform a T.E.E. with him under sedation using a scope to take pictures of the fluid around his heart and the scope broke, causing them to hault the procedure. As the day went on, it became more severe. While they were able to ease the bloating, it didn't go away. But he was able to get some sleep. When they went to wake him on February 22nd, he awoke very confused. They immediately wanted to transfer him to the ICU. While they were preparing him to move, he became shorrt of breath, in pain, and went into cardiac arrest. They brought him back woth CPR after about 8 minutes. They sedated and intubated him, then completed his transfer to ICU. Because he showed no sign of heart issues prior, they did a scan of his heart. After the scan was complete, they brought him back up to ICU and were hooking him back up to his IV's he coded again. They began to perform CPR again and brought him back after about 5 minutes. The scans had shown fluid in his paracardial sac around his heart and it was squeezing his heart to where it was having a very difficult time beating. There was also a lot of fluid in his abdomen. They performed a procedure where they drained the fluid with a needle near his heart and inserted a drain to help get the remaining fluid out, along with a drain in his stomach. They had a hard time keeping his blood pressure up, so they were giving him many different meds to level his BP and ease his pain. After several hours and being somewhat stabilized (still with a low BP) the night ICU physician came to our mom and recommended he be transferred to another nearby hospital with better equipment and cardiac team to get him the help he needed. After discussing it with a few different hospitals/doctors, it was decided he be transferred to Baptist Hospital to receive a higher level of care and a better chance of survival. At 12:30 am, on Feb 23rd, he was transported successfully and admitted to their Cardiovascular ICU Unit where he has a team of specialists working his case. Since then, they've managed to keep his BP up and treat the infections but are testing to see if there are anymore present. So far none have shown. They managed to reduce his meds to just pain and sedation meds since Feb 25th, and continue dialysis while still incubated and sedated. Feb 27th, they did a Bronchial scope to get a culture from his lungs to see if there are any remaining bacteria/infections. We have not received the results from that culture as of yet, and are also waiting them to perform another T.E.E. to take pictures of the remaining fluid around his heart to see if there is any bacteria/infection there. Everyday he gets a little more alert, even while sedated He is taking little steps in the right direction, but not out of the woods yet. We still need a prognosis and treatment plan. He is still sedated at this time.

Since being hospitalized, he and our mom have no income, as he is there and our mom is caring for him. They are on FMLA through their work as patient and caregiver, but are not paid for it. He will need even more help and care once he is able to go home. He will most likely need physical therapy, and they will need help with utilities, car payments to get him to and from appointments and other things, their home, food, and any medical bills that may not be covered by insurance. We don't know how long it will take for recovery, or for him to even be discharged since we don't have answers yet. Our mom will need to stay by his side and be his caregiver.

Please, if you could, help us take care of them so they can focus on getting our dad well again without the additional stress. We would love for them to be able to focus on his recovery, instead of worrying about money in this time of need. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts.