I am asking for help for a very dear friend of ours, Jeff Dysart. He will be 52 in April and has worked hard his whole life. He has been a business owner; he is a machinist. He's the youngest of 12 kids, grew up in Fontana, CA. If you know the Dysart family from Fontana, yes, he is one of them lol. He would give the shirt off his back. He never intentionally does anyone wrong and if for some reason they feel wronged he does what he can to make up for it anyway. He is a great person and an awesome friend.

He is not used to feeling helpless, even though he has had health issues. He was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis 20 years ago. He has thyroid issues. He's got cataracts and glaucoma.

Recently he found out he has growths on his spine and was going to start treatment for that at city of hope, but before that started, he had an MRI that found an AVM (arteriovenous malformation) two inches from the top of his brain.

The way Jeff explained it to me, an AVM is a ball of arteries, veins and stuff that were tangled up around his brain stem. That ball of stuff was turning into cancer. The ball was located in the center of his brain near the pituitary gland and optical nerve.

On February 22, 2024, he had a craniotomy to remove it. They went through his temporal lobe had to remove a piece of his cerebral cortex in a very intensive 12-hour surgery. Loma Linda Hospital flew in the top 5 brain surgeons in the country to assist in the surgery. They had to remove a piece of his skull for the surgery, remove some of the cerebral cortex to get to the center of his brain and then they had to untangle the ball of stuff as much as possible.

He was told he may need to learn how to walk and talk again and that he would likely need to be in a rehab for months to a year. However, Jeff was talking and alert joking within a day after the surgery and walking (with a walker) by the next day. Within a few days he was able to go home with his girlfriend of almost 20 years. To us, we feel like he is a miracle and has made an amazing comeback.

With that being said, recovery hasn't been easy so far. He's lost a lot of his eyesight since the surgery, which the doctors said could happen. He can hardly see anything and now he is having seizures but is taking meds for that issue that seem to help some. He's walking but not without the help of a walker. The pain has been off the charts for him and is not getting any pain meds yet.

Depression has been hitting him hard. The doctors said most people that go through a surgery like this will have to deal with depression, but it is not his usual personality. He's always been a really independent and a workaholic. Having to depend on people now for everything has not been easy for him and needless to say he can't work either. Now his bills are piling up and he's getting behind on his rent. He is applying for disability and stuff but so far, he has been denied. So, he is appealing or re-applying, but until he can get some kind of financial assistance, he needs some help.

Jeff cannot be homeless right now; he is not in any kind of condition for that. His brain swells at times, and he is very much in a delicate condition. I know if it were me or my husband, or many other people that Jeff knows that was going through something like this, he would do whatever he could to help us. So here I am asking for help for him so that he can pay some bills and rent so that he can recover.