Support Tommy Bass's Fight for Life-Saving Transplants

Hello everyone! My name is Lauren Bass and I am reaching out to our family, friends, and anyone else willing to help my dear husband, Thomas Bass, aka Tommy. He is truly such a sweet and amazing person who has just had the worst time over the years with health. Starting from a young age, he has had multiple heart surgeries. Skip forward to the last few years, he has had diverticulitis, bowel resection surgery, multiple hospitalizations for infection, and more. Then he had a surgery to help with weight loss about a year and a half ago, which was the best decision he could have ever made. He lost over 250 lbs since then, getting healthy and starting to be able to do things he hadn't been able to do in 15 years, and life was good.

But then recently, in May of this year, Tommy was diagnosed with Stage 4 liver failure and both left and right ventricle heart failure, as well as atrial flutter and A-fib. Since May, he has not been able to do much of anything and has been told by doctors it is terminal unless he gets a liver transplant and heart transplant at the same time, as they won't put a healthy organ into a patient with a different failing organ. But one isn't bad enough yet, and the other is too bad.

Long story short, there have been lots and lots of 4-hour round trips to Durham, NC, for him to visit Duke Hospital, where he is getting treatment from a cardiologist and a hepatologist, and soon to be a second cardiologist. With these visits come lots of expenses that I, as the only household income, have been unable to afford, which includes but is not limited to me missing work to take him to the appointments (since he is unable to drive per doctor's orders due to the encephalopathy caused by liver failure), parking fees ($14 every time we park, and if we leave and come back, it's $14 again), gas ($35 per trip), and wear and tear on the car to get him there. There are also very high co-pays ($75 per appointment since it's a specialist), lots of doctor's bills, food, and even hotel stays for times that they have him booked multiple days in a row, which has happened recently and is also scheduled to happen again in the near future, and more.

Upon approval for the transplants, when Tommy is put on the list officially, he will then need to relocate within 30 minutes of Duke Hospital due to regulations of transplant recipients in case anything were to go wrong afterwards, as well as being close when the organs become available. They said he will need to be there at least 6 weeks, if not longer, after the transplants, which will also be very expensive, having to get a hotel for that long and for transportation from the hotel to the hospital for his follow-up appointments, as I will have to stay at home with our daughter more than likely so that she doesn't have to miss that much school.

There are lots more details I could include. If anyone has any questions or concerns, please ask by commenting here or messaging me on Facebook. But as of now, that's all that I can think of to include as far as the reason for requesting help from people monetarily.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this. Thank you everyone for any prayers, and I appreciate you all.