Tiffany Hegglunds Medical Treatment

Tiffany Hegglund, a school teacher in Glendo Wyoming, has lived a very blessed life. Tiffany has been a very active member of her community, when she's not teaching she's helping with the families business, she's a part of the Pony Express, and on most days you will find her out riding her horses, playing with her nephews, taking care of her animals, or helping local ranchers in anyway she can. Tiffany has been known as a girl on the go. She lives an active life and enjoys being outdoors. In 2016 Tiffany was a nominee for the Teacher of the Year award. She has a kind heart and is well-loved by those who know her. 18 months ago Tiffany started noticing some abnormality in her health, when she approached her doctor at the time he shruck it off saying it was nothing. As time went by her concerns didnt go away, but became worse. In August of 2017 Tiffany had lost a lot of weight, she couldn't eat and when she did eat it went right through her system, she was in a lot of pain and she was so weak she could barely walk let alone get on her horse. She was losing a lot of blood and everyday that pasted by became harder for her just to do daily tasks. Reluctantly, Tiffany went back to her doctors, after running some tests it came back that Tiffany had an autoimmune disease. They prescribed her some medications to try and help. After a week they noticed she was not getting better in fact she was getting worse. They decided to prescribe her steroids as well. With her condition continuing to Escalade they finally hospitalized her at the beginning of September. Where she spent a week in the hospital trying to get strong enough to get discharged to be able to go see a specialist in Denver. After she was discharged she went to Denver as planned to see the specialist but not much progress had been made. Tiffany came home with more questions and not a lot of answers. All the while her body continued to deteriorate. Two days after they got back from Denver Tiffany woke up in the middle of the night screaming in pain. Her mother Dianne Gams was there, she loaded Tiffany up and took her to the hospital. It was very apparent when she arrived at Memorial Hospital of Converse County that she was very ill and needed attention beyond what that hospital had to offer. So a couple hours later they took Tiffany by ambulance to a larger Hospital in Casper Wyoming. Where they began to run more tests, at this time we knew Tiffany either had Ulcerative Colitis or Crohn's disease. They had Tiffany on a high dosage of steroids and knew they needed to start a treatment plan right away to start fighting against the disease. They began to start the treatment plan as recommended by the gastroenterologist. Throughout this whole event Tiffany continue to decline in her health she couldn't eat her digestive tract couldn't handle any food products going into it. Tiffany became so malnourished that her body could no longer produce simple things like protein. After starting the treatment and monitoring her for several days her malnourishment became a bigger concern, her body wasn't responding to the treatment as they had hoped. They finally decided to insert a PICC line so they could give her nutrients through an IV. Shortly after the PICC line was inserted Tiffany started complaining of shoulder pain. After running a CT scan we were made aware that Tiffany had a mega toxic colon which means a hole had ruptured in her colon and was leaking toxic gases and waste into the rest of her body. The pain she was feeling was gas build up in her chest cavity. This had become a life-threatening problem. Within 40 minutes they had Tiffany in surgery. Their intent was just to take out the diseased area and leave as much as possible for Tiffany. After two hours of surgery the surgeon came out and informed Tiffany's family, that the surgery was a success, however her entire large intestines had to be removed it was all infected. The recovery from surgery although was very painful and hard, went fairy good.. After a couple days Tiffany begin to eat and there was hope in the air. After being in the hospital for almost a month we finally got to take her home. All seemed well. Four days after being out of the hospital Tiffany started throwing up she became very ill and very weak. She was brought back to the hospital where they discovered that Tiffany had an infection from her previous surgery and between the mix of the infection, the long-term malnourishment, and trying to recover from major surgery her digestive tract shut down. They quickly started blasting her system with IV antibiotics to try to fight off the infection, then they once again put her on NPO, which means no food or drinks of any kind until her digestive tract woke back up. They inserted another PICC line to try to get nutrients into her body. After spending another week in the hospital they were able to get the infection under control and her digestive tract slowly began to wake back up. Tiffany was officially diagnosed with Crohn's disease and will need to begin a treatment plan soon to prevent from her Crohn's attacking other organs in her body. Because of the uniqueness and severity of Tiffany's condition we have been referred to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. Where a team of specialists will work with Tiffany to try to come up with the best treatment plan for her. This is been a long journey for not only Tiffany but for her family that has walked beside her along this road. We are asking for some help. We have extended all of our own resources trying to care for Tiffany's needs however her needs have gone beyond what we can handle on our own. We are asking for some help to help get Tiffany to the Mayo Clinic so she can get on a treatment plan to fight this disease. We are also asking for help to help cover some of the medical expenses and some of the loss of income Tiffany and her family's had to go through, throughout these past several months. But most importantly more than a financial help we're asking for prayers. Please continue to pray for Tiffany, pray for the doctors, pray for her family, pray for her students and her friends. If you are able and you can help financially we would greatly appreciate that. We look forward to the day when she can once again ride her horse. Thank you and God bless.