Medical Bills Current and Future Help

Hi,
My name is Cody Hicks and I would like to give you a story about my wife Katie and why our family needs your help sharing our story and donating a small amount of just $5 or even $1 to help. My wife is currently at Saint Thomas Hospital in Nashville, TN with a severe concussion causing memory loss all the way back to 2016. Her brain currently is not functioning at its maximum potential for a 27 year old and she also is struggling with walking, lifting and overall balance and function with her daily routine. I am going to take a step back and tell you how we have gotten to this point and why we need help.

Katie is a wonderful mother to our daughter and an amazing wife. She is the type of person to always care for other people and put someone else’s needs before her own. My wife has had a lifelong dream of becoming a Registered Nurse to help others, she is currently a LPN. Katie has always struggled with low blood pressure issues even as a teenager and it has always been something we never thought could become such a dangerous issue. Last year on August 22nd I came home early that morning after working night shift to realize my wife was not the same person. As I awoke her to ask if she was sick and staying home from work she was very annoyed and confused with me. Katie had no idea where she was and what was going on. I ended up rushing her to the ER at Saint Thomas Rutherford. They decided to admit her to the hospital and start doing neurology test and get some cardiologist on hand to see what had happened. My wife had passed out and hit her head sometime between when I left for work and when I came home that morning. Katie had multiple tests done including: A echocardiogram, EEG, EKG, MRI, CT scans, Etc. All of these test came back clear and they told us she must have a severe concussion as they could see no bleeding on her brain or anything that could be potentially life threatening. We left the hospital a couple days later and her memory was still gone, she had to learn the area we were living in again and her job wanted to let her go. We make it about 3 weeks and her memory starts slowly coming back and she was allowed to return to her job. Sometime around October she had another episode of passing out and hitting her head causing her to have some short term memory loss, we went to a neurologist and they did test test of her brain and we were told just to give it some time and things could return to normal. Her work obviously would not let her come back until she was cleared and had some memory back. During this time my wife was demoted from her current position and was allowed to come back around November. A short time after returning she passed out again and was also dizzy at work a few times that week causing them to believe she was a liability issue and was put on a medical leave until further notice. We made it all the way to January using up our savings and taking out small loans here and there to try to get by and get the help we needed to get her back to a normal life. After awhile we ran out of money and options and had to give up everything we had been working for and move back to our hometown putting me in a situation of driving around 90 miles a day to keep a stable job. It took her a couple of months to be cleared back to work after finding a neurologist that gave her medications to keep her blood pressure up and to start adjusting to a life with Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS). My wife started to get better and was once again a LPN and started working and started making plans of getting back on track around April. She had small concussions between January and April that never fully allowed her brain to recover. June 12th she passed out hitting her head with more memory loss. I ran her to lawrenceburg ER and we ended up with the same news of it’s just a concussion and it will be ok, this episode caused her to lose her current job as she was even there for 90 days. This was another short term memory loss that lasted around a month. The small town we live in made it hard to find another job after recovering from this accident. She started at her current job near the end of August I believe and now we are in the same situation. On October 14 of 2019 she passed out and hit her head cause major memory loss back to 2016. She currently is in the hospital Saint Thomas in Nashville undergoing multiple test with the same issue that everything comes back ok and it’s related to a concussion from passing out because of POTS, however this time she has memory loss, she also has stroke like symptoms as the left side of her body is very weak. She has had doctors check on her and run test and plenty of therapists come to help. She currently doesn’t have the full potential of her brain, memory loss is obvious but she also has trouble with her reaction times, her multitasking ability, her attention span is low and her overall cognitive function is lower than what’s expected. Her physical side is struggling to, she has issues moving her left leg, she can not walk by herself without the major potential of falling backwards, her left arm has very little strength and her overall balance is completely off. We have been told she will remain in the hospital until they feel safe enough to let her leave at which point she will be transported to a rehab facility to work with her motor functions around 3-4 hours a day and also speech therapist to work with her on memory and brain function a few hours a day. We need help to pay down some of these major medical bills we have already received and some of the loans we have takes out just to pay them off beforehand. We were told she will need to continue seeing these doctors to try to get back to a normal life when she’s free to go home however we have ran out of money to keep her going. We don’t have very good insurance and I am also a diabetic which puts an even bigger strain on the whole situation. We are hoping to raise this money so we can get her to the point she needs to be, currently she can’t hold a job with the issues she continues to have and we can’t seem to catch up on the bills we need to pay down. It’s a hard feeling going to a doctor for a check up and to get meds and further help only to find out we can’t be seen cause we owe more than we can afford from the last situations.

We ask that you say a prayer and give a small amount. It doesn’t need to be much even if it’s a dollar but you can help us immensely by at least sharing this story anywhere you can so we can get her story out to enough people! Thank you all for reading and have a blessed day!