For 2 Years She’s Been Sick And Doctors Aren’t Sure What’s Causing This But Her Sister Is Hoping They Can Figure It Out Soon So She Can Be Home For Christmas
Chico, California. For the last 2 years, a young woman in California named Theresa has been struggling with being sick, but doctors aren’t sure what’s causing this at all.
Sadly, since October she’s been in the ICU at Shasta Regional Hospital, while doctors still work to figure out what is going on.
Her little sister Becca says that her symptoms include bloating that’s so bad she appears pregnant, severe pains in her stomach, and issues with eating some foods.
“…With every doctors visit she’s been given another “maybe” but no real answers,” Becca explained on a GoFundMe page.
“The diagnosis that has made the most sense recently was Crohn’s disease which is defined as “a chronic inflammatory bowel disease that affects the lining of the digestive tract”, but there have not been adequate tests to confirm it.”
“After many visits, her doctors prescribed her prednisone which is a mild steroid and that’s where the medical bills began piling up.”
“After her first dose of the medication she ran out of money between her visits and her normal everyday bills and she wasn’t able to refill her prescription and the pain began to worsen.
She was doing everything she could to keep going to work and get on top of expenses so she could afford to go see her doctor again and when she finally did, he called for a surgery to remove a mass in her intestines early in the morning on October 26th.”
GoFundMe; pictured above are Theresa and Becca
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Before Theresa went in for her surgery, she was hoping this would solve all of the pain she was experiencing.
Her family rallied around her, confident everything would go well while looking forward to Theresa returning to the happy and healthy young woman that they knew before she became ill.
Although the surgery seemed to go smoothly and Theresa returned home, not long afterward, Theresa wound up in an ambulance on her way to the hospital.
Doctors discovered that she had sepsis due to some complications that happened from her surgery, and the infection was very terrible. She was in critical condition.
After arriving at the hospital, she was then airlifted to Shasta Regional, and Theresa has been there for over two months now.
She has also been on a ventilator since she arrived at Shasta Regional, and she has undergone more surgeries and more tests.
“While she’s been there they’ve been treating the infections while still trying to confirm or deny if she even has Crohn’s and they’ve had to perform multiple surgeries and blood transfusions just to keep her alive,” Becca said.
While all of the nurses and doctors treating Theresa have been wonderful at communicating with her family, it’s still been an emotional rollercoaster for them with some days holding good news and others bringing nothing but the bad.
Becca and Theresa’s mom has frequently driven the three hours from their home to Shasta Regional to see Theresa since she was re-hospitalized. She has stayed strong and has held it all together for their family, but everything really hit her hard when Theresa couldn’t be there with them all for Thanksgiving.
“She’s been doing a good job at keeping her composure and acting okay for the rest of us but you could really see the toll all of this was taking on my mom when Thanksgiving came around and we were all in our homes enjoying dinner while her oldest daughter was laying in a hospital bed alone almost three hours from home,” Becca continued.
Becca went on to say that she and her siblings all moved out of their mom’s house not too long ago, and so money has been tight for them all.
None of them have much extra to help Theresa out financially with her medical bills, which are only growing as she remains hospitalized.
And so, Becca has created a GoFundMe to help continue Theresa’s medical care, which you can donate to here if you would like to.
“All the proceeds will go directly to Theresa so the doctors can continue to treat her and she can hopefully be home by Christmas,” Becca concluded.
More About:Human Interest
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