Keith's heart and liver transplant fund
Donation protected
As many of you know, my husband of almost twelve years Keith is waiting for a heart and liver transplant. The transplant will take place at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Keith was born with Congenital Heart Defects (from birth) and has had numerous procedures, surgeries, hospitalizations, and implanted devices throughout his life to help him live a good quality of life. At this point, his medical team has determined that the only way to prolong his life for more than a few years is via a heart and liver transplant.
For those of you that know us, understand we are not ones to ask for help unless we really need it. We have sat down with medical social workers and financial people from the hospital and looked at the average costs (non-medical) for what we will need to help get us through this.
The following is an explanation of the difficulties we foresee going through this:
After the initial surgery I will need to be at the hospital by his side, this will be probably two months. So, I will need lodging in Philadelphia while Keith is in the hospital and after Keith gets released from the hospital, Keith and I will stay in Philly for at least a month or a month and a half (possibly longer) due to appointments for biopsies to monitor for rejection. As the appointments get further apart, we can move back to our apartment in Baltimore and travel back and forth to Philly as needed. Obviously, Keith will be out of work during the transplant and recovery period, he has saved up as much vacation and sick time as he can but once that runs out it will be over 90 days before his Long Term Disability policy kicks in and starts paying part of his salary.
We have saved and budgeted as much as we can, however, it just seems like the expenses keep growing the closer we get. Luckily, the health insurance we have has been great so far which is a huge relief, the expenses we are asking you to help with are for paying our out of pocket transplant-related expenses ~10K per family, we have saved a decent emergency fund so we should be able to pay our rent and other monthly bills to make it through this period.
After the initial expenses, there will be the ongoing medicine that Keith will need for the remainder of his life and continued to travel back and forth to Philly as needed.
We have made the decision that if we receive more than we need through this Go Fund Me campaign, we will pass on the unneeded portion of the funds collected to others in need of organ transplantation.
If you can help. Thank you. Please pray for us and the doctors. Please send us all positive vibes and energy. All of this mean more to us than you could ever know.
Susie (zulma) and Keith
For those of you that know us, understand we are not ones to ask for help unless we really need it. We have sat down with medical social workers and financial people from the hospital and looked at the average costs (non-medical) for what we will need to help get us through this.
The following is an explanation of the difficulties we foresee going through this:
After the initial surgery I will need to be at the hospital by his side, this will be probably two months. So, I will need lodging in Philadelphia while Keith is in the hospital and after Keith gets released from the hospital, Keith and I will stay in Philly for at least a month or a month and a half (possibly longer) due to appointments for biopsies to monitor for rejection. As the appointments get further apart, we can move back to our apartment in Baltimore and travel back and forth to Philly as needed. Obviously, Keith will be out of work during the transplant and recovery period, he has saved up as much vacation and sick time as he can but once that runs out it will be over 90 days before his Long Term Disability policy kicks in and starts paying part of his salary.
We have saved and budgeted as much as we can, however, it just seems like the expenses keep growing the closer we get. Luckily, the health insurance we have has been great so far which is a huge relief, the expenses we are asking you to help with are for paying our out of pocket transplant-related expenses ~10K per family, we have saved a decent emergency fund so we should be able to pay our rent and other monthly bills to make it through this period.
After the initial expenses, there will be the ongoing medicine that Keith will need for the remainder of his life and continued to travel back and forth to Philly as needed.
We have made the decision that if we receive more than we need through this Go Fund Me campaign, we will pass on the unneeded portion of the funds collected to others in need of organ transplantation.
If you can help. Thank you. Please pray for us and the doctors. Please send us all positive vibes and energy. All of this mean more to us than you could ever know.
Susie (zulma) and Keith
Organizer
Zulma Jimenez
Organizer
Baltimore, MD