Lori Hill NEEDS our Help NOW
Lori Hill needs our HELP!! Some of you may remember her as Lori Watkins, or even Lori Golding. She currently resides in Champaign, with 3 kids at home; and her husband Rick Hill, also formerly from the Bradley area. She was a long time Bourbonnais resident, a 1992 BBCHS graduate. She is mom to 7 kids, and a grandma to 2. Lori has become very ill, and needs a liver transplant. She is unable to work, and will be for an indefinite amount of time. Rick is a roofer, although he does some work & side jobs throughout the winter, his income is also limited at this time. Please take a few minutes to read Lori’s history & story. I apologize for the length in advance.
Lori went to Presence with leg swelling in August, but they weren’t much help in discovering a true diagnosis. In October she again was experiencing swelling, along with trouble breathing. Carle being the amazing hospital began running test after test to find the true cause. She was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism as well as anemia; however the most alarming diagnosis was NASH.
NASH, short for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, is a type of liver disease in which liver fat builds up in people.
This means Lori’s liver is failing. The only thing that will help Lori is a new liver.
As a result of the liver failure, Lori was filling with fluid, which then causes pneumonia. There were 2 procedures to remove the fluid. (1) Thoracentisis pulls the fluid from her chest and (2) Paracentisis pulls fluid from the abdomen. They pulled multiple liters of fluid from both. After 6 days, Lori was discharged with several follow up specialists appointments & testing. She attempted to go back to work, but began missing a lot of time.
December 16, Lori was again admitted to Carle with pneumonia like symptoms making it necessary to have another round of thoracentesis & paracentesis procedures to drain 2 liters from her chest, and 3 liters from her abdomen. This time she was in for 5 days.
Dr’s confirmed this will continue until Lori is able to have a successful liver transplant. 
MELD, or Model for End-Stage Liver Disease, is a scoring system for assessing the severity of liver failure and prioritizing for receipt of a liver transplant. There are several factors that are used to determine this score, and it ranges from 6 (lowest) to 40 (highest). Just to give an idea, at a score of 11 they place a patient on meds, a score of 15 means they want you on a transplant list, a score of 22 means they want the transplant done ASAP.
On November 24, Lori’s MELD score was 27. As of December 27, Lori’s MELD score has increased to 30.
Lori’s specialist is working diligently to begin the process, and have referred her to Barnes Jewish in St Louis for this. What this means is Lori CAN NOT work, she has no income. She has to have the means to travel to St Louis. She will need to be ready at minutes notice to travel. We all know that bills don’t care if we are sick & they will continue to heavily mount up. She will have an extreme amount of financial distress, on top of the emotional & physical burdens she is experiencing. Those that know Lori, know she would literally give the shirt from her back to help another & it’s time
WE HELP SUPPORT HER. SHE NEEDS US NOW MORE THAN EVER BEFORE. If you can afford to help, please do so. If you want to help
in other ways, please reach out to myself (Kelly Stilts) or Kathy Hamlin, Lori’s sister. We will be working on a benefit when we have more info regarding the transplant. We will work to keep updates here as they become available, but ask that you please do not overwhelm Lori with questions. If you have them, ask Kathy or I.
