Sandra Bettocchi is a second grade teacher for Greenville County schools. She works at Blythe Academy teaching math and science in Spanish and has been in that position for the last 11 years. What most people don’t know about her is that she has had a very long painful medical history. Most people would not even guess that because she’s always happy making silly jokes with her students. When she was a young adult she was diagnosed with five autoimmune diseases that were extremely aggressive and were killing her within two years. Because of this she had a stroke and her doctors decided that she needed an experimental bone marrow transplant to save her life. At 18 years old she over went the bone marrow transplant which was super successful and she got rid of all those autoimmune diseases. One of the side effect of the Bone Marrow transplant was avascular necrosis of the femoral heads. What this means is that the bone in your hips die from lack of blood supply. The only way to help this is having a hip replacement. She over went her first hip replacement during her first semester of college but that did not stop her. She graduated college to become a Special Education and Elementary school teacher. After that she had a second hip replacement and everything went well.
On June 2019 Sandra needed to have her third hip replacement surgery. Surgery went well but unfortunately after four weeks of surgery her hip got an infection. She ended up with septicemia and had to have surgery again to remove the metal stem that was placed inside her hip. She was prescribed six weeks of IV antibiotics to kill the infection. After three weeks of finishing the antibiotics the doctors decided to do the hip replacement again. Even though she did not have any sign of infection when they opened her hip the doctors noticed that there were still signs of infection. Because of this they could not do the hip replacement and instead she was prescribed four weeks of IV antibiotics. The antibiotics will be finished at the end of October when she will have to wait two weeks to be able to do the hip surgery again. Because of all this medical problems Sandra has only been able to work as a teacher for three weeks this school year. She ran out of sick days and now she’s not getting paid. She’s not going to get paid for a total of two months. Also, her medical bills are through the roof even though she has medical insurance. We are trying to raise money to help her be able to afford her house, her car, her bills And support herself for the two months that she will not get a paycheck plus help her be able to pay her medical bills. She does not have any family in the country that can help her. Any amount that you wish to donate will be greatly appreciated! All she wants to do is be able to go back to school and work as a second grade teacher which is her passion and to be back with her students that she loves.