Ryons Post Heart Transplant Fund

First I want to start off by personally thanking every single one of you that has sent kind words, thoughts and prayers our way! We have been very blessed with loving Friends & Family. If you are just hearing my dads story for the first time, he is a post heart Transplant patient as of April 29th 2020. My dad found out about his illness on December 16th 2019 after what he thought was going to be a quick trip the urgent care not feeling well turned into being sent to the hospital finding out he was in the end stages of heart failure. He trialed many medications, a Zoll life vest, a ICD, along with many other adjustments and life changes. Dad ultimately ended up just being to sick, the doctors at Duke decided after all trails had failed to list him on the heart transplant list. Dad was given a time from of 6-8 weeks to receive a heart before becoming to sick the point he would not qualify. After only being listed for 5 days, we got the call that Tuesday afternoon there was a heart available and dad was the ONLY match. The heart was a non high risk heart and couldn't have been a better fit, so my mom and myself hurried and packed and headed up to Duke with dad. After a long night of anxiously awaiting after dropping him off the the emergency room doors, and constantly watching the life flight helicopter land and take off multiple times Dad received his heart Wednesday morning on April 29th 2020. 
Dad has been home since his heart transplant, but also has been admitted several times throughout these past few months.  Things have not been as smooth sailing as we would have hoped, Dad has had multiple complications since receiving his heart and is currently back at Duke as we speak.  His heart is back to functioning at only 30%. Dukes team of doctors have been doing there best to find out the reason behind this. There are a lot of questions as to why this is happening with not many answers. His heart is not rejecting and as far as we know there is no infection. His red & white cell counts have been low, we found out he has a hernia, along with ulcers in his esophagus and a few other health issues. 
As we are extremely blessed and grateful for all the good, we are still needing MAJOR prayers for the difficult that has come. Dad will never work again and mom is disabled. The amount of traveling back and forth from Duke is adding up along with multiple hotel stays and medical bills in general. I am creating this page not only for the chance to help my parents out, but also as a way to spread his story hoping it will reach many prayer trains! Every prayer counts and as of now we need all we can get.
I will continue to post updates on this page as well as my personal Facebook page to keep everyone updated!  This has been a rough journey, but also a huge blessing these past few months. Again, to every single one of you please know how much we have appreciated you. At times its hard to talk about or reach back out, but every action has gone noticed! Please feel free to share!
- Laura Ertel