Susan's visit to the Mayo Clinic

In the last 5.5 years, my mom, Susan Zerkel, has developed a daunting queue of a medical history. From 4 auto-immune diseases to Ebstein Barr Virus (2nd round of Mono, extremely rare situation) to Tenosynovial Giant Cell Tumors (1.8 in a million chance of diagnosis in ONE place, but she has it in TWO places) and much, much more,  she can't seem to catch a break, and the 25 surgeries in that time span (with 2 more required) haven't seemed to permanently fix the issues. She has a team of 22 doctors working to diagnose issues and moderate symptoms and, as a result, has 22 prescriptions that she takes daily. In an effort to connect the dots and figure out the big picture, Susan was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. According to Mayo Clinic "Mayo Clinic experts solve the world's toughest medical problems — one patient at a time. No matter what serious, complex or rare health challenge you're facing, you can be confident that Mayo Clinic has extensive experience in treating patients with your specific condition." She'll be going to see the expert doctors in early November; however, with the financial burden of this year's (2020) 71 appointments, she was planning on making the trip to the Clinic alone to keep the cost as low as possible. In an already intimidating situation, this meant facing discussions, testing, and diagnoses with the doctors alone (physically- luckily she has a support system that would call to check in on her). In my book, that's not okay. So, I'm telling you all of this with the hope that we can raise enough money for Susan and Ryan to go to the Mayo Clinic TOGETHER. We're estimating the trip will cost $2,000, including lodging, food, and transportation.