This Go Fund Me page is for Ashley Gruner, a 19-year-old freshman college student at GCU who graduated from Tesoro High School in 2022. In April, she was rushed to the medical clinic in AZ for which appeared to be a Gastrointestinal virus that was spreading heavily around AZ/CA.

April 23-May 9 - Beginning symptoms: vomiting, neck, back and head pain. The medical clinic performed a lumbar puncture to check for meningitis and eventually sent her home. 30 hours later, ER called her back requesting she return asap. This is when her long journey really begins.Bacteria growth in her culture from LP taken on April 25, ER transfer to a hospital in Chandler, AZ and 3 more MRIs, ICU stay on bedrest and IV antibiotics. Everything was unknown at this point. Now 6 MRI’s, endless blood work and more testing of every kind they finally found something. Her lumbar puncture caused an internal leak called cerebrospinal fluid leak (CSF) which means her spinal fluid was leaking. She then got a contamination staph infection. Immediate spine surgery was recommended, but instead they chose to monitor her and continue doing more MRI’s while she remained in the ICU on IV antibiotics, pain medication and bed rest and with the hope that the leak would start to heal on its own. This did not happen. May 2 she was discharged/transferred to Kaiser in California. She met with her PCP and she ordered brain, lumbar and thoracic spine MRI’s. Six more MRI’s were performed. The MRIs and all of her brain MRIs were abnormal, and she was re-admitted to Kaiser in Anaheim where the neurosurgeon would be waiting for her. More tests, MRI’s and CT’s. At this point she is on MRI #15.

May 9-21 more tests, doctor’s visits, IV antibiotics, home-care nurses, ER visits, Neuro team discussions, etc. and finally, she was transported by ambulance to the Kaiser Anaheim ER for the Neuro team.

May 22- Her Neurosurgeon was able to determine she had a cerebrospinal leak hiding out by the T1/T2 spine after getting her CT results back and watching the dye leak out. They think the leak happened when she had the first lumbar puncture at 1st ER and her spine shifting creating the hole could be due to getting rear ended in AZ. Add to this that the spinal fluid leaking out had possible meningitis in it (proteins in culture, but all tests say negative) so she’s went back on IV antibiotics. After horrible reactions to antibiotics, spinal surgery was planned. They need to stabilize the spine by adding a metal plate and screws at T1/T2 and seal up the leak/hole with a cadaver bone that will be infused into the hole. It will stop the spinal fluid leak which is what was causing the postural headaches.

May 25-May 30: Rescheduled surgery date, 5 days of antibiotics and pain meds were needed for her surgery on May 30th.

May 30-present: 3-hour Surgery was performed. They found a large tear in her dura sac and spinal fluid was flowing out. Added a metal plate with screws to her spine. Infused a cadaver bone into the spine to help seal the hole in spine by T1/T2.

Please pray for Ashley and her long road to recovery. She will be wearing a head brace for 3-6 months, can’t lift over 5 pounds and will be participating in recovery and physical therapy with specialists. Needless to say, Ashley will have some large medical bills and is missing her summer job opportunities.