Katie Schaefer-Murray's Medical Recovery Fund

On March 12, 2018, Katie woke up without vision in her left eye, and without full use of some of her limbs. She was taken to the hospital, where she stayed a week undergoing a battery of tests, resulting in no firm diagnosis other than “an event” had happened behind the eye and the retina was detached.
Exactly a week from the day she woke up without vision, Katie had the first of what would ultimately be six surgeries over the next year and a half to save the eye. Over that year and a half, Katie was ultimately diagnosed with autoimmune issues, having a benign form of MS. Because of this, none of her six eye surgeries took. Instead, her body fought each one like it was a foreign invasion, pushing stitches through her eye, growing massive amounts of scar tissue, and finally, creating too many red blood cells on the eye, essentially strangling it and causing it to shrink.
On September 20, 2019, over a year and a half later, she had her seventh surgery, and the eye was amputated. Throughout this time, and now, Katie has suffered not only physically and emotionally, dealing with daily pain, but financially. She has missed roughly six months of work, almost all unpaid, and is now facing even more hospital bills and lost income. She has been relying on her parents and other family for the last year and a half to help her and Eric make rent. This fund is to help ease the financial burden she has amassed from all of this, by giving her the ability to pay her doctors, bring her normal living expenses current, get her through her recovery without worrying about how to make ends meet, and help get her back on her feet.