Medical Expenses for Chael

Hi, my name is Chael, and I'm fundraising for unexpected medical expenses for my endoscopy and colonoscopy procedures I did on May 2nd. I've been suffering from stomach problems for a few years but never bit the bullet to see a gastroenterologist like my school/family doctors have suggested because I am uninsured and could not afford to do so.

Then back in Thanksgiving 2021, I had to be taken to urgent care for extreme lower stomach pain and constant throwing up (I couldn't even drink water. The doctor suggested I be kept on an IV drip, which I declined due to cost). Ever since then, I have not been able to eat normally. The breakfast I had at 10 am would just sit in my upper stomach without digesting, causing major nausea, loss of appetite and dizziness. Eventually, I would have to make myself throw up before I could comfortably fall asleep. I repeated this lifestyle almost every single day while working as a server at two different restaurants to save money. The lack of food I was able to consume naturally led to a lack of nutrition-- I lost 15 pounds in a span of a month and started losing so much hair that even my hairstylist warned me, saying something was very much wrong and that had nothing to do with the health of my hair itself. I'm still 43kg (93 pounds) as of yesterday compared to ~50kg (110 pounds) I was back in November of last year when my symptoms suddenly got worse.

I finally decided to get an endoscopy/colonoscopy done for 3 main reasons: 1) My family doctor has done everything she could on her side and couldn't find the cause, 2) My cousin who is younger than me had been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer after also having doctors that dismissed her symptoms just because she was so young, and 3) I genuinely couldn't live my life anymore without being able to eat and digest food. I thought it was worth a serious check-up to go back to living normally.

Unfortunately, they couldn't find anything wrong after the endoscopy and colonoscopy procedures. Even though I paid the $3.1K out of pocket (I have no insurance) fee on the day of the surgery, I was charged an additional $2.5K today. The explanation I received was that the facility fee and the physician fees are separate and that I should expect another bill for biopsy and anesthesiologist fee in the future too. Before going into the procedure, I made a myriad of calls to different departments asking for a quote so I could prepare for the cost. None of them gave me an exact answer, the reason being "they can't reveal that information because it causes people to doctor-shop." I finally badgered one of the nicer billing ladies enough to get a quote of about $4K but now I'm expecting to pay at least $3K more.

I currently have Covid and have a major surgery coming up early June (unrelated to my stomach problems but one that has been planned and paid for months that requires at least 6 weeks of recovery time). I won't be able to work for a couple months and the medical expenses are much more expensive than I had initially set aside money for. I would appreciate any sort of help. Thank you.