Our friend and colleague, Levi Thomas, has fallen on some difficult times involving health issues lately and is asking for some help. If you can't donate, no worries! Please share the link so we can get the word out. These are his words directly from his Facebook page that I have permission to share.

Please be advised you may read something you may feel Is TMI but this post may help someone. And sorry for typos Its harder to use my phone now.

Ok .. the short and sweet version Is ….on Feb 3rd i woke up in the middle of the night with crazy headache , fever and shivering like I was sitting outside with no coat in. Thought it was just a super crazy flu/fever when temp got to 104 .

Got it down to 102 but decided to go to prompt care next morning. After seeing blood in a urine sample they quickly sent me to the ER. Once there they are running CT & MRI’s & can’t get my now new high blood pressure down or the blood in the urine issue , so I’m admitted into the ICU.

While there I keep having doctors and nurses ask me if I have a safe home life and if I feel safe at home . I replied “Unless my wife is kicking my ass while I sleep it’s pretty safe”. Mind you I’m a little out of it because of the fever and headache. They decided I needed to be transferred to OSF because there were tests they could not do where I was . Still having no clue what’s going on. All I remember hearing was I had a Blood infection.

Now at OSF , they are doing a CT , MRI, Angiogram, a TEE, Echocardiogram and a few more and on top of that a shit load of blood tests. Then they are asking did I have a happy home life and if I felt safe . I’m asking , why are people keep asking this question. Then they added a few new ones . “ did you have a recent fall? Did you cut yourself on anything? “

To speed this up this is what they found. I had contracted a Staff infection ; no clue how, which led to a Stoke / brain bleed aneurysm.

WOW! Uh . Lose of words. Then it got even better.

They are asking me if I get tired while walking up stairs or if I have shortness of breath ever . I say no , they look at me like I’m crazy then tell me I have a prolapsed heart valve which is a really bad leaky one & an enlarged right atrium. I ask what that means since I feel fine outside of the rest.

Their explanation is that I will need open heart surgery to fix the issue and the are pretty concerned about getting it done ASAP but they can’t because of the infection and having brain bleed is not good when they have to give you blood thinner for the operation. So I got to come home with a picc line in my arm for infusion treatments for the Staph dosage every eight hours .

I now have multiple follow ups until March 26th when I meet with surgery team so they can go over the surgical option .

I walk like a cat who got its whiskers cut off and just was able to walk down the stairs so i could sleep in my bed after being home now for two days. No just waiting for some in-home rehab and taking a few walks everyday to get better before doing it all over again i think. Oh boy this is going to be a GREAT YEAR