Tom and Marilyn Gertsch

Hi, my name is Alison Muller and I’m fundraising for my dear friend, Tom Gertsch who is still in the hospital for what should have been a two day back surgery.

On Monday, January 8th, Tom went in for part 1 of his back surgery. As the surgery team entered through his stomach to make their way to his back, a vein was nicked and Tom lost a lot of blood. After the surgery, he was placed in the ICU where he was heavily sedated and intubated.

On January 10th, he started breathing on his own and they took the tube out of his mouth. He remained in ICU, was given a liter of blood but was in a lot of pain.

On Friday the 12th, he was moved to his own room. He was feeling a little better

and many of his IV’s were removed. He was trying to eat, move around a little but the swelling in his legs and pain in the incision were making him very uncomfortable.

On January 16th, Tom was is a lot of pain and there was so much swelling in his stomach and legs. He had a CAT scan & x-rays to see why he was holding so much fluid. They would need to go in and drain him which required an emergency surgery. They drained ½ a liter of fluid from his stomach.

Currently he is still in the hospital feeling extremely bloated, in pain and very swollen. Today, he was moved back into the ICU with a tube through his nose into his stomach. They want to keep an eye on him since he’s a “medical mystery”. His blood levels are coming back fine but his blood pressure keeps going up and down and they can't get a grip on it. He is sedated enough to keep him comfortable and sleeping while he receives antibiotics.

Please keep Tom in your thoughts and prayers and please consider making a donation to help offset the medical bills that are definitely building up.

UPDATE JANUARY 22, 2024

From Lauren,

Just checked in on the Go Fund Me...YOU

GUYS! Thank you. From the bottom of all our hearts, thank you. There are no words to truly describe how grateful we are for each and every single one of you. We appreciate all of your love & support. This is absolutely mind blowing. Thank you everyone for showing up. With your donations, your thoughts, prayers & kind words

Dad is still in "ICU Jr." The Dr is trying to move him to the Spine center (fingers crossed) his vitals are pretty good. His

heart rate keeps fluctuating and that's a bit of a concern at the moment. He also still has a blood clot in his leg, so they're still heavily monitoring that. He's very weak so they want to try starting PT with him. Hopefully they can get that going

tomorrow.

Again, thank you. Thank you everyone

I will continue to update this page as I get more information from Marilyn.