Support Chris's Fight for Life-Saving Transplant

We are looking for some help with moving and medical expenses after we moved across the country for a very rare life-saving surgery for Chris.

In late 2021, Chris developed a blood clot in the vein that supplies blood to his liver. Over time, the clot became worse, and in 2023, surgeons attempted to divert blood flow through a shunt. The procedure was a failure, and the problem was made worse. In addition to the liver not receiving adequate blood, the back pressure from the clot began damaging all his organs. About a month later, Chris had to stop working due to his health problems. His liver doctor told him that he had two options: get ready to go into hospice care, or that there might be a chance that a program in New York could help.

After meeting with doctors in New York in November 2023, the ball started rolling, and Chris was sent home to work on getting up to date with numerous vaccinations and other doctor’s visits. Doctors had not yet officially accepted him as a patient in their program, but they had him preparing for their program in case he turned out to be a good candidate. During that time, Chris’s kidneys began to fail, and his doctors asked him to check himself into the hospital for a “little tune-up.” Chris admitted himself to the hospital in San Antonio on February 8th. Less than two weeks later, he was transported by air ambulance to Columbia Medical Center in New York City, with full organ failure.

Chris is still in the hospital in New York City, and Jessica has uprooted the home to an apartment in New Jersey. We are waiting for a suitable donor, so that Chris can receive a multivisceral transplant: doctors want to take esophagus, liver, stomach, pancreas, kidneys, and intestines from a donor and transplant them into Chris. Without this procedure, doctors have made it clear that he has a very short life expectancy. With the transplant, there are many risks, but also the possibility of extending his life. Chris is very high on the transplant list and could be sent to surgery any day now. If all goes according to plan, Chris is expected to have a long road to recovery: ICU followed by a rehabilitation center, and he will need extensive care from doctors in New York for at least two years after the surgery.

This surgery is very rare, only about ten of these are done in the US every year, and Chris’s surgeon is the best of the best.

Throughout all this upheaval, we have incurred expenses that just keep coming. We have had to move our lives across the country on a moment’s notice. We are furnishing an apartment from the ground up. We are incurring a ton of expenses from transportation as Jessica crosses into New York city daily to spend time with Chris. We are spending over $700 monthly just to pay unavoidable tolls and to park in the hospital parking garage. He has been in the hospital for three months, with no release anytime soon, and the bills are adding up. Jessica is still a full-time student at Texas Tech University, and must pay for tuition, books, etc.

We are staying strong in the face of a lot of obstacles at the moment, but we could use a little help staying on our feet.