Hello. My 22-year-old son has had a very rough past 7 months. It started with him having open-heart surgery at the end of July 2024. He recovered from that fairly quickly. Then, all of a sudden, he woke up on Dec 14, 2024, with some chest pain. He went to work, but as the day progressed, the pain increased. I took him to the hospital, and he had a moderately sized pulmonary embolism. The doctors were able to break up the clot, but he developed “complicated” fluid, which they had to surgically remove. He was discharged after 2 weeks but remained in pain and very short of breath. At his follow-up appointment, more fluid was found in his chest cavity. A few days later, we went to the hospital to have the fluid drained by a simple outpatient procedure. My son started coughing up a lot of blood and was immediately put to sleep. When the doctor came to get me from the waiting room, the look on his face and telling me to sit down to talk after asking if my son was okay was the scariest moment of my life!! He told me what happened, and once my son was put in an ICU room, I was able to finally see him. He had to have thoracotomy surgery (one of the most painful surgeries). After being discharged after another week WITH a chest tube, he was still in a great deal of pain. He got the tube out, and doctors told him he would feel 70% better. He did NOT! He continued to have increasing pain and shortness of breath. We took him to FL with us to visit family to try to help get his mind off of things. His situation got so bad that we had to go back to the hospital down there. He stayed there for about 5 days just for them to tell us there was nothing more they could do!! I do not want to give up searching for an answer for him. I have contacted a few top-ranking hospitals, and we finally have an appointment next week with the Mayo Clinic.

We are asking from friends, family, blessed strangers, because during this time, he has not been able to work. Thankfully, I have had the opportunity to pay for his bills, but won’t be able to for long. His medical bills are also starting to stack up. We just need some relief in our time of extreme exhaustion and stress. Bless everyone who decides to help, no matter how small.