Michael Bonic Medical Expenses

On the morning of 1/20/23, my dad was having intense chest pains, so he drove himself to the ER and got there around 6:30am. Jordan and I headed there, and by 6:50, they had done a CT and found that he had an aortic dissection and he was in critical state. They instantly started looking for a helicopter to airlift him to a bigger hospital. After an hour and a half of looking, they were able to confirm he could be operated on at Barnes. He made it through the helicopter ride, and when he got to Barnes, the cardiac team instantly took him to surgery. He started surgery around 11:30am, and we were finally able to talk to his surgeon around 8:30pm (the surgery lasted 9 hours). His surgeons words at that point were “he is doing OK”, with a big emphasis on the “OK” part (I would characterize his demeanor as calming, not upbeat, factual.) The surgery went as planned, for the most part, with a few complications. They were going to monitor those complications over the night. We were finally able to see him (sedated) around 11:00pm. The doctor told us to get some rest and that he would call if something went wrong (at this point, I would characterize his demeanor as concerning). I got the call at 1:30am, that some of the complications were not going as he wanted, so he was going to have to take him back into surgery. He was in surgery from 2:00am, and the doctor came to give me an update at 4:30am. When the doctor came in, he looked the most positive I had seen him the whole time, he explained that he was able to fix the complications from before, and it went very well. I think it was the first sense of relief I had felt, just by seeing how the doctor looked. Thank you to the ER team at Sarah Bush for their urgency and being able to identify the critical state quickly. Thank you to the his current Barnes team of doctors that have been extremely accommodating. THANK YOU from the bottom of our hearts to everyone that has reached out, been praying, and thinking of us. It is going to be a long road of recovery, so we could use all the support we can get. We know our dad has made such an impact on so many, we know he is a fighter, and we know he has a lot more impact to make.