Help Me Pay Medical Costs

I'm Grace, and for the last couple of years, I've been a medical mystery.

Randomly and with very little warning, I'll get sick. Really bizarrely sick. I'll feel some abdominal pain, and suddenly, I'll be throwing up... and my body can't stop. The first time it happened, I threw up 72 times in 36 hours, and was in and out of the ER until I was finally admitted to the hospital.

We've learned that it gets worse the longer I have to wait for treatment. Learned that I have to be careful to change clothes before heading to the hospital, because if I wear something that discloses that I'm LGBTQ, I'll wait enough longer for treatment that it's dangerous. Once, I waited over 5 hours, until I was throwing up every 2 and a half minutes... which resulted in diabetic ketoacidosis and a 3 day hospitalization.

I've been hospitalized for days at a time, lost weeks to being dosed with anti-nausea medications that I'm allergic to, lost my ability to read for weeks at a time. The only thing they've found to stop an attack is administering doses of fentanyl and dilaudid in the ER. That's a little terrifying, given that we're in the middle of an opioid crisis. Is pent most of 2023 on a liquid diet, introducing bites of solid food one week at a time.

I'm doing everything I can to prevent these attacks, even though doctors can't determine why it's happening, and one huge source of relief is that my care is now being coordinated through our hospital's Inclusion Clinic, which exists specifically to serve LGBTQIA+ people. My team of healthcare providers currently consists of: 2 gastroenterologists, rheumatology, pain management, infectious disease, a specialized gastro nutritionist, ophthalmology, multiple OB/GYN specialists, internal medicine, endocrinology, hematology, an allergist, pain psychologist, chiropractic, acupuncture, and my amazing internal medicine PCP.

There are medications that are helping, but they're expensive-- seventy dollars a week for the only anti-nausea medication I'm not allergic to, for example - and that's with insurance covering it! Three of my medications, I have to pay for entirely out of pocket because insurance refuses to cover them. Many of the treatments like acupuncture that keep me out of the hospital, they won't cover.

I've been on FMLA at work, which allows me to take time off to go to all of these doctor's appointments, but it also means that my income has taken a hit.

I'm still determined to keep being myself-- volunteering in my community, serving in advocacy roles, co-hosting my podcast, being present with my family and friends, working, crafting, reading, doing everything that my body will let me do- and rebuilding every time I'm knocked down.

Financially though, all this is crushing. Sean and I have always lived carefully. Years ago, we took great pride in getting credit card debt under control and never carrying credit card balances. In October of 2023, I was still managing to do that. By the beginning of March 2024, we were carrying almost $10k of credit card debt between us, and facing some hefty bills ahead... and the doctors are saying that I likely need to have an exploratory abdominal surgery.

We thought we could manage everything as long as nothing more went wrong... but then an emergency veterinary bill, an expensive veterinary dental surgery for our cat Panther that was postponed and unexpectedly turned into a costly veterinary oncologist appointment instead, and the expense of humanely euthanizing our cat Shouty Baby when she collapsed last month have wiped away any cushion we had built for ourselves.

So the truth is... we need help.

We need the kind of help I have the hardest time asking for - financial help.

So for my birthday this year, I'm starting this Go-Fund Me. The amount that I'm trying to raise would let Sean and I pay down our credit cards so that we're not living under the constant drain of the interest payments... and so that I have space within my credit limit to cover the next medication or treatment that insurance suddenly denies. So that if I end up back in the ER like I have so many times before... we can manage the financial burden.

Any amount you can give helps. And if you can't give (or can and want to help more), please share this with anyone else who might be able to help. It's really, really hard to be the person needing help, and asking for it is the hardest part-- helping me past that and sharing this request is something more valuable than I can put into words.

Thank you to anyone who can help, in any way you can help.