Melissa & Mike's Medical Fund

In 2013 Mike was in a nearly fatal motorcycle accident due to the negligence of another driver but luckily recovered very well. Mike was in another nearly fatal accident in 2014 while Melissa was pregnant with their first child. The rest of this story is a recap from Melissa on what their family has been through in the past 6 months. Please take the time to read it and help them out if you are able. It would be great if we can raise enough money for them to be able to start their life as a family without so many financial burdens. Thank you!!

“On Father’s Day 2014 Mike and I found out we were going to be parents! July 1 totaled my car thanks to someone making an illegal turn and was put on bedrest. In September, I stopped working since I was traveling for work and it was becoming too hard being pregnant. On October 11th we moved into our first place together, a townhome in Draper :) The next weekend, on October 18th, while I was 6 months pregnant I got the call that Mike had been in [another] motorcycle accident and the ambulance was taking him to Utah Valley Regional.... I kept telling myself he’s in an ambulance, so it can’t be THAT bad.. And I made my way to the hospital as fast as I could. I actually flew by a cop on the freeway going about 90+ and by some miracle didn’t get pulled over! Once there I was wandering all over looking for anyone who could tell me where I needed to go but the place was a ghost town - so odd! Finally a doctor was walking down the hall, so I explained my boyfriend was being brought in and he led me to the emergency area where life flight happened to be landing at the same time I approached. All I could think was “please don’t be Mike!” It was. I watched them slowly get out of the helicopter and unload Mike. I thought based on how slowly they were moving that he must be dead since there was no sense of urgency. I walked next to my unconscious boyfriend in the stretcher into the ER waiting for what was to come next.

 Before I knew it they wheeled him off to have brain surgery to repair a severed artery. The x-rays were bad.... His skull had so many fractures that when they removed a section of skull to attempt to repair the damage, it broke into two pieces, so it took two metal plates to put his skull back together making this a total of 10 plates total throughout his body from his accidents. They didn't expect mike to wake up at all or even survive another day. It was a nonstop battle with infections and fevers and swelling while he remained in a coma for the next week+.

As you can imagine all our preparations for the baby we had begun to dive into were put on hold. During that time I just wanted to focus on Mike but it was a nightmare trying to figure out how to pay all his/our bills and rent since he hadn't put me on his bank account yet. It was a big mess trying to get power of attorney to access his account. The doctors started mentioning that soon we'd need to make some decisions about whether or not Mike would want to pass on.. Meaning we need to consider "pulling the plug". That same night, as I sat alone with him desperate for a sign he was still in there, not willing to accept I had to plan his funeral and try to raise our son alone, I noticed him trying to open his eyes, so I told the nurse who tried for the hundredth time that week to wake him; asking him to give us a thumbs up if he could hear us.. He lifted his hand and gave us a thumbs up! I cried I was so excited to see that sign of life! After that, it was a very very slow process of him coming out of his coma. It’s not like the movies where a person just suddenly wakes up. It is the slowest process of your life. We saw improvements daily but there was the constant fear of not knowing when the improvements would stop. Would he need assistance the rest of his life? Would his speech just be gibberish forever? And no one could tell us anything. You just never know what will happen with a traumatic brain injury.

For several weeks he didn’t even know who I was. After some time, He would hold my hand and kiss me but when I asked, he'd tell me he didn’t know me. Once he moved to in-patient rehab at the hospital he was remembering me but not that I was pregnant. I stayed every night with him because he'd ask me to but he still had no memory of how we met or anything. I was just familiar and he said he just knew that he loved me but he didn’t remember me. Our townhome remained full of boxes since we didn’t even get the chance to really move in since he wrecked the next week. I spent 24/7 with him (literally; He could not be left alone. This included taking him to the bathroom and everything.) Caring for him and scheduling his therapy and basically babysitting him. We finally got to a point he could be trusted alone. I still have to remind him to turn off the stove or oven if he has cooked anything but physically he was doing well. We lost money on rent but were eventually able to get out of our lease and move into my parents' due to finances.

The next day after moving, I was admitted to the hospital where I had our baby. He has been perfect! The baby was to be on Mike’s insurance but Mike was injured and out of work, so we missed open enrollment and we were denied for Medicaid, so now have a bill over $7,500 just for the baby. I had several complications; I ended up needing an emergency C-section; when they started, I could feel what they were doing, so had to be put completely out. I lost a lot of blood and wasn’t woken up for several hours. Once I was awake I had two blood transfusions and still had to wait several hours to see our new son. My C-section then got infected which then spread. My blood got infected and my abdomen filled with abscesses. I had drains in my stomach then was woken up one day and told I had to go into surgery right then and would likely lose my uterus and colon and bowel. Fortunately, I did not lose anything but had to spend 3 miserable weeks in the hospital throughout all of this. My baby was released from the hospital before me, so he stayed in my room with me which also meant someone had to be there with us at all times to care for him. For the first month+ of his life I barely even got to hold him due to my pain from the two large incisions on my stomach - one of which remained open for days just in case I had to go back into surgery.

 A week after being released, I went to get the staples out of my vertical incision from my second surgery to find that it hadn’t healed so I had to pack the open wound twice a day. It turned out to be a blessing that Mike was still not working since this enabled him to care for our baby and myself. I am still on the mend but much improved. Everything that could go wrong the last six months seems to have happened. We both almost lost each other and we're just happy to be a family now. It has been stressful trying to heal and get life in order again (everything is still in boxes! Argh) and deal with the never ending supply of medical bills and legal stuff. We're trying our best to get caught back up on everything but life keeps throwing us more and more challenges making it that much more difficult.  I.e. me getting stranded with baby with a flat tire then again when the spare blew and having to replace all 4 tires with money we didn’t have. (Sigh. It's never ending) I'm glad our baby doesn’t know any better for a while because we still don’t have a crib or changing table or any furniture actually! Mike still struggles with speech (finding the right words) and his memory is terrible; he’s still Mike, but he'll never be the same person he was. It's actually a very conflicting feeling.  But we're both still here and still refusing to give up! It's just overwhelming; I wish life could pause and give us a chance to catch up!”



(First Accident in 2013)