Heart Failure - Medical Bills for Michelle

I went to visit my friend Michelle yesterday at Hartford Hospital. She's been in and out of hospital 11 times since May 2022, she was miss diagnosised with COVID pniemonia but actually having heart failure. Her story which I stole from her facebook page is below. She is too proud to ask but she will never be able to have a full time job anymore. She is not eligible for SS but permanetly disabled, she is waiting for surgery and bills are piling up. Her daughter took a hiatus from school to help out and her husband is working hard to keep food on table, bills and everything together. Michelle is someone I've known since I was 7 or 8 years old, her family is like my family. She's always been a ray of sunshine and still is even through all this, smiles and laughs and talking fast... ❤️ I really want to help them out and raise at least 10 to 20k! It's a lot but this is life long heart disease, it's not going away. Her Mom lives with her, she has grandkids she helps out, and she's someone who goes and buys food and drops off to others when they post on facebook. She did that for me after I had surgery, she'd give her shirt off her back for you... it's her turn to receive❤️

Michelle Facebook Post:

May 7 2022 woke up feeling fine like any other day. About an hour or so after waking I started to have a tight feeling in my chest and started coughing, the cough was unending and I could not catch my breath. I went to the hospital and was (miss) diagnosed with COVID Pneumonia. I was given a breathing treatment and sent on my way. I was getting worse by the minute and had to return to the hospital immediately because at that point I was feeling like I was going to pass out. I remember walking into the exam room, the ambulance ride to Charlotte and then waking up intubated. Upon arriving at Charlotte I went into cardiac arrest and congestive heart failure, thankfully the life saving measures they performed saved my life that morning. Unfortunately for me they were working off the COVID pneumonia diagnosis and for 8 days I sat in ICU. Jeff finally insisted that they start looking at something else because I was getting worse. After several invasive tests and scans they determined that my mitral valve had basically blown out. The daily negative COVID tests were right, I never had Covid, it had been my heart the whole time. My heart sustained quite a bit of damage during the week and subsequent weeks before my surgery to replace the valve. So while I have a shiny new mitral valve I have a severely weakend heart that can’t keep up with the demand a body requires. Since my heart is not functioning properly I am in constant heart failure, my ejection fraction is in the 20”s which is about as low as you can get and still be upright and functioning. I end up back in the hospital when my body can’t get rid of the fluids that a normal person is able to and I can’t breathe because my lungs are where the excess fluids go. My internal pressures inside my heart are lower than they should be and that will cause me to feel lightheaded and on the verge of passing out. I am not able to return to the office for work and I’m not able to be in the studio as much as I’d like. The problem now is that my ejection fraction is continuing to go down despite all the medication and medical interventions my wonderful staff of drs are trying. This of course has been extremely stressful for Jeff and the kids who have stepped up and taken over for all of the things I normally do. it’s been devastating medically, physically and financially. Please keep me in your prayers, I can use every one that I can get!!