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My name is Doug Heidebrink. I have been married to my amazing wife Jarita for 25 years. After 13 years together,r Jarita and I were blessed with our son Mason. He is a really great kid, and makes us very proud to be his parents.
In 2010 I was diagnosed with polycythemia vera. It is a blood cancer that causes a person’s bone marrow to make too many red blood cells. There is no cure for this. We treated this for a couple of years with blood draws to keep the blood numbers right. When the platelet counts rose to dangerous levels, we had to switch to a chemo therapy pill to control the blood numbers. This worked well and after some time I developed a pain in my back. My doctor did an MRI and we found a fairly large tumor eating the spine and crushing the spinal cord. We did surgery, chemo therapy, and radiation to fix this. I was able to continue working through this recovery process and it went pretty good.
Jarita and I were both working and started getting some of the medical bills paid that we had accumulated. Life seemed to getting back to normal and all was good.
About a year later the tumor decided to come back again. It had eaten away at another vertebra, and once again was pushing on the spinal cord causing severe pain. After much discussion another surgery was decided upon. 14 hours and 4 surgeons later they had completed removing another vertebra, and rebuilding my spine once again.
It has been roughly 7 months since I was released from the hospital, and it doesn’t look like I will be returning to work. Jarita has been our only source of income in those 7 months and the medical bills have stacked up pretty good even with good insurance.
I am making this page to ask that all who read this please pray for my family and all people who are battling chronic pain. Also if you feel inclined to lend a financial hand to us, we would really appreciate that. We are trying to raise enough here to take care of half of bills so far to date. Whether you are able to pray, donate, or just keep us in your thoughts, know that we will be asking God to bless each one of you.
Thank you and God bless,
Doug, Jarita, and Mason Heidebrink
In 2010 I was diagnosed with polycythemia vera. It is a blood cancer that causes a person’s bone marrow to make too many red blood cells. There is no cure for this. We treated this for a couple of years with blood draws to keep the blood numbers right. When the platelet counts rose to dangerous levels, we had to switch to a chemo therapy pill to control the blood numbers. This worked well and after some time I developed a pain in my back. My doctor did an MRI and we found a fairly large tumor eating the spine and crushing the spinal cord. We did surgery, chemo therapy, and radiation to fix this. I was able to continue working through this recovery process and it went pretty good.
Jarita and I were both working and started getting some of the medical bills paid that we had accumulated. Life seemed to getting back to normal and all was good.
About a year later the tumor decided to come back again. It had eaten away at another vertebra, and once again was pushing on the spinal cord causing severe pain. After much discussion another surgery was decided upon. 14 hours and 4 surgeons later they had completed removing another vertebra, and rebuilding my spine once again.
It has been roughly 7 months since I was released from the hospital, and it doesn’t look like I will be returning to work. Jarita has been our only source of income in those 7 months and the medical bills have stacked up pretty good even with good insurance.
I am making this page to ask that all who read this please pray for my family and all people who are battling chronic pain. Also if you feel inclined to lend a financial hand to us, we would really appreciate that. We are trying to raise enough here to take care of half of bills so far to date. Whether you are able to pray, donate, or just keep us in your thoughts, know that we will be asking God to bless each one of you.
Thank you and God bless,
Doug, Jarita, and Mason Heidebrink