Andrea Loza Medical fund

Hello everyone, my name is Andrea Loza and I’m 19 years old. I was your living the typical teenager’s life; playing sports, hanging out with friends. I had also just graduated high school in May 2015 and was continuing my education the following fall at the community college, as I had accepted a scholarship to play soccer for the college.

I was having the normal summer, without any problems, until one day at soccer practice, I fainted. While I thought nothing of it at the time, this turned out to be a bigger problem than I had originally thought. The athletic trainers for the team ended up taking me to our college training room and they dumped me in an ice bucket. This didn’t help out very much, so they just decided to take me to the ER.          When I got there, the doctor also told me it was just heat exhaustion so he just sent me home. A few days later I thought everything was fine, and then I started getting attacks again of which consisted of headaches and numbness on my left side my arm and leg and face. So I went to our family Dr., and she told me my headaches and numbness were caused by low potassium and recommended I take some vitamins. That continued to happen for 2 weeks. There was talk that my symptoms might have also been caused by a pinched nerve or something so I just thought nothing.

 Long story short, on August 17th came around and I started my first day as a college freshmen. I woke up feeling fine. Went to school and during one of my classes I started to get another attack, which again, caused numbness and headaches. As always, I thought nothing of it so I went through the rest of the school day and then I got home around 11:30 a.m.  Once at home, I get really tired when I got those attacks, so I just took a nap to make the day pass by. When I woke up I was still numb. I had no use of my left arm or leg anymore but I continued to watch TV. But then 10:00 p.m. came along and it progressively started getting worse so I told my mom that I wanted to go to the ER. So she took me and thankfully there was a different doctor there so they drew blood and gave me an I.V and they sent me to do an M.R.I/M.R.A and the doctor came back with the results and he said that I had a stroke.

 I instantly started crying because at that time I was still 18 years old and no 18 year old would ever think they would have a stroke. When they finally told me what was going on, they gave me an option to go to Wichita or Lakewood, Colorado because those are big stroke hospitals and my hospital in my home town does not specialize in strokes. I ended up in Lakewood, Colorado and thankfully they air lifted me to the St. Anthony’s hospital, who has one of the very best stroke and trauma units in the country. I got there around 3:00 A.M and they treated me for my stoke symptoms. The doctors at St. Anthony’s told me I was I was born with MoyaMoya disease (Here is a brief description of the disease, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moyamoya_disease) and that’s what caused my stroke. MoyaMoya causes my brain to have thin arteries, and this was especially true for the right part of my brain. The artery on my right side of my brain shut down and caused me to have a stroke. MoyaMoya is super rare and less than 10% of the world’s population has this genetic disease.

 My total stay at St. Anthony’s was about 3weeks.The rehab I did at St. Anthony’s helped me gain control of most of my left side. I can walk without a cane, and I am able to talk now without a sign of a stroke. I still have a hard time using my left hand, but hopefully with some hard work, I can get the full use of my left hand.  So I’m back in my home town now and doing rehab.

After a few weeks of doctor visits, the option of surgery was given to me. They are doing a bypass surgery to my small, damaged artery on the left side of my brain. This surgery will decrease the percentage of having another stroke down from 15% to 0%. So basically, I’m starting  this GoFundMe page to help me with my brain surgery that I’m getting because my family and I believe this surgery can fix this disease I was born with. Although my insurance has been extremely helpful, my Medicaid is running out on September 30th and I’m trying to have my surgery on the 19th of October. This means that my family and I will not be able to afford the surgery.  I come from a single mom household and we don’t have that kind of money for my brain surgery and my mom had to stop working to help take care of me. Because we always need to go to Colorado or Kansas City for doctor’s appointments it’s hard to find rides there because we don’t have a reliable car.

 I really need this surgery because if I don’t get it I can get another stroke and lose the use of my left side completley and it can't wait for later it has to be done soon. Right now my life is on hold until I get the surgery, I need it because I want to stop worrying about the chances of having another stroke, and if I get this surgery I can have kids live a normal life and I don’t have to worry about having another stroke. And all I want is to be normal again, well as normal as possible, because I still have a lot of rehab to do.

I am asking your help to get me to as close to 100% as possible, and with this surgery I’ll be able to go back to my normal life. The surgery is belived to cost around $100,000 (before insurance) but we are wanting to raise $30,000, to help us get started saving for it. Brain surgery is unfortunelty not cheap, but my piece of mind is very important to me. My family and I will be forever grateful for any donation. We will keep you posted with any important information that comes our way. Thank you for taking time and reading my GoFundMe page.