Justine is getting brain surgery, yikes.

Hi, I'm Justine's friend Casey and I made her let me make her this gofundme. It's really hard to ask for help. You know how when people try to say something isn't hard they say "it's not brain surgery"? Well. This is definitely, literally brain surgery. Turns out it's actually pretty hard.

Here's a description from Justine of what is going on at the moment:

"Over the last year (and probably much longer) I've been experiencing a variety of symptoms including headaches, cognitive issues like memory problems and forgetting words, progressive pain, numbness, and tingling in different parts of my body, dizziness, trouble swallowing, and host of other symptoms. 

In trying to figure out why all of this has been happening, I spent the last year going to five doctors and having lots of different medical tests done. Over that year the symptoms have gotten progressively worse, with headaches lasting days, and neurological symptoms becoming more frequent and severe. 

I’ve finally been diagnosed with a condition called a Chiari Malformation, which basically means my brain is just a little bit too big for my skull and it’s getting squished. The only treatment for this condition is brain surgery. So right now, that’s what I’m preparing for.

I have a surgical consultation on 1/21 to go over the finer details of my treatment plan and put the surgery on the books."

Justine is lucky enough to have good health insurance, but even so there many expenses involved in her treatment, such as:

*Her outstanding medical bills from the long road to diagnosis
*Her copays for tens of thousands of dollars in surgery, procedures and medications
*She'll probably need to take some unpaid time off of work during her recovery.  She'll need to be able to pay bills, rent, etc during this time.
*She will need physical support during her recovery time, which may require her to travel to be near her family, or to hire a home healthcare assistant.

Her surgery will be soon (the date is being set January 21), and the last thing Justine needs is to stress out about money when she should be getting well. Your assistance will help her maintain normalcy in a decidedly abnormal time. 

Justine would also love your help in the form of:
*Assistance with household tasks like cooking, cleaning, shopping, playing with kitties. These tasks are getting more and more exhausting and a hand would be amazing.
*Companionship! Come over! Be friends!
*Rides to appointments