Help Michelle Pay for Medical Bills
My best friend and favorite person in the entire world, Michelle, suffered cardiac arrest at work on Friday, August 6, 2021. She was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect early in 2019. Earlier in 2020, she was scheduled to get a minor, non-invasive surgery so doctors could monitor her heartbeats. Because of covid, that procedure was pushed back multiple times. We are both teachers and work extremely hard for our students and our colleagues. This year, Michelle was helping other teachers in her room the Friday before we had students return and she collapsed, seized, and her heart stopped. Thankfully, our school's AED team was able to quickly administer CPR and got her heartbeat back before the ambulance arrived. Upon their arrival, they continued CPR, loaded her on a stretcher, and took her immediately to the emergency room after stabilizing her pulse and heartbeat.
Because of this, Michelle was in the hospital for a week. She was kept in a medically induced coma for three days while doctors monitored her heart and blood pressure. Finally, she woke up, but it took a couple more days for her to fully realize where she was, what happened, and what was happening during the school year while she was recovering. Thankfully, she is home now but is still attempting to recover. She still feels weak, her heart is still weaker than it was before the cardiac arrest, and she is still suffering from the pain of broken ribs, but now she has to deal with all of her medical bills. Today, she got the bill for the ambulance and it was...unaffordable to say the least.
Michelle has not yet been able to meet her new students for the 2021-2022 school year. Michelle loves nothing more than being at school with her kids and it has been an absolute heartbreak for her not to be able to be with them. We are still unsure about how long her road to recovery will be. Michelle is also the coach for our Colorguard program and she is still unsure if she will be able to continue to coach because of the status of her heart. I have never seen Michelle happier than when she is interacting with students whether that is teaching or coaching. This money will at the very least give her the peace of mind to pay her medical bills, especially since she and her husband just got approval for their home loan. Your help would mean the world to Michelle, my absolute best friend in the world, and will make it so that she only needs to worry about recovery -- not adding the extra worry of how the medical bills will be taken care of.