Quality of life

I’m starting this off by saying I loathe gofundme’s.. I think they are abused and people look for the easy way out.. however, hear me out.

This is not for medical bills. We have insurance for that. This is not for our home life, we both have jobs and will cross those roads when we get there. We would exhaust every single option and drown to death in it before taking a cent from anyone for our monetary expenses.. That is just who we are as people. I have had an overwhelming amount of people ask me if they can do anything at all, and all I need in this life is my husband to have his quality of life back. How do I do that? How do you restore someone who has lost all faith in his life.

This man only cares about three things in life. His family. Virginia Tech football. And BBQ.

His family is taken care of as long as he is alive and with us. The other two loves are the only way I know how to help. I want/ need to get this man to a Virginia tech game this season. If this happens, I want to let him know that he will be sitting as close as possible to the field at the upcoming VT vs. WVU game. If this happens, I want to let him know he can buy the travel

smoker of his dreams. If this happens, I want him to know his quality of life is within reach.

This is his story:

Two weeks (ish) prior to February 9th, my husband/ best friend/ baby daddy, started experiencing debilitating, severe headaches. February 9th, he drove down to the Virginia Beach area to do a survey for work. I got a phone call that afternoon that he was found unresponsive behind the wheel and was involved in an accident and I was provided with the hospital he was being taken to and no further information. I made the three hour long drive without knowing if my husband was alive, injured, stable, or in a life threatening condition.. when I arrived to the hospital, I was not aloud to see him or given any information on his state, I was told he was in the hallway and a nurse would discuss it with me when they found time.. I have a medical background and am not stupid when it comes to connecting the dots. If he was in the hallway, he was stable enough to be so. 5 minutes later, harry, unrecognizable, came walking towards me, confused as could be saying he doesn’t know what happened but he was being discharged.. I looked through his discharge paperwork and it said he had a seizure. He had zero history of seizures or anything relatively close. We got him home and started the process to find out what happened. He was referred to a neurologist and ordered to get an EEG.

His severe, debilitating headaches continued. February 19th we went shooting for his 34 birthday with our oldest daughter. By the time we got home, harry had his first migraine with visual disturbances. Several hours went by with no relief. I was asking him about his symptoms when he stopped responding to me and proceeded to have his first witnessed grandmal seizure. The seizure lasted every bit of 5 minutes, resulted in him biting his tongue so hard, he couldn’t eat or swallow for a week, and since I had zero neurological

knowledge, I called 911. Upon arrival to the hospital, he had zero recollection of what had happened but his tongue had also started to swell. They observed him for a couple hours to make sure it wouldn’t obstruct his breathing, started him on anti seizure medications and send him home. We followed up with neurology the following week where the news was broken that he couldn’t drive for 6 months from the last seizure. For those of you that know harry, he works an hour+ away from home and taking away his driving crushed him. He started getting depressed and had a very negative outlook on everything.. but we were managing.

Fast forward to the worst day of my life, March 5th. Harry continued having the severe debilitating headaches that no medication would touch. We had a great morning but as we were finishing up our errands, he got another severe headache. He closed his eyes for a couple minutes before deciding he needed to clean out his smoker. (If you know Harry, he would quit his job in a heartbeat to become a professional bbq-er if given the opportunity). Austyn wanted to spend time with her daddy so she asked to help. About 30 minutes into it, I hear Austyn screaming for me. Harry had started having another grandmal seizure and his poor sweet daughter had to witness it. She did everything as I taught her and we handled his seizure at home with no issue.. we thought. After getting help to get him back inside, he started screaming in pain and begging me to help

him. Nothing he was saying was coherent. I got help getting him to the car and drove him to the ER praying he just needed some pain relief and we would be on our way. Two hours into our visit his pain became unbearable and the finally gave him a heavier pain medication. He calmed down, and was taken to have a scan done. When he returned an hour later, he was completely unresponsive. His eyes were open but he would not follow commands, talk, etc. the doctor was paged and due to his decline in mental status they decided to do a blood draw to check the amount of oxygen in his blood. Once that resulted I was told, they have no idea what is going on but they needed to intubate him immediately and get him to the ICU. He spent the next 18 hours heavily sedated and on a ventilator. The following morning, they lowered the sedation and let him come to, to assess his brain function. He started following commands but became very angry being on a ventilator. The process was started to extubate him. By the grace of god, he was taken off the ventilator and did fine breathing on his own. He was severely confused and couldn’t answer simple questions. Through scans and blood testing, we have zero answers. His memory and mental status has returned but he is still getting the severe headaches and when he does he gets brain fog to the extent he can’t form a sentence or answer questions. His seizure medication has been changed and he was started on an IVIG to treat any type of antibody reaction that may be happening in his body. He underwent a lumbar puncture that we are still waiting the results of.

Harrys spirit is at an all time low and as his wife, I don’t see it getting better until he has his quality of life back and something in the near future to look forward to.

This may be the worst idea I’ve ever had in my life. Or it could be the best.