Medical Bills and Other Expenses

Hi my name is Lexi, I’m the mother of Gary’s child and Gary’s closest friend. On Friday August 25, Gary suddenly went into cardiac arrest while he was at a bar after only having 2 drinks. He had no heartbeat. People at the bar were able to immediately start cpr until EMTs arrived. Unfortunately Gary was without a heartbeat for 8mins. The EMTs shocked him twice and were able to get a heartbeat at that point but he was not able to breathe on his own. They got him to the hospital and when he arrived Gary started having seizures back to back. Once they were able to stabilize him they ran tests and fortunately/unfortunately they found nothing wrong with his head, chest or heart. That leaves many questions as to why this is happening. Around 2 am Saturday morning when we were getting ready to leave Gary coded again. They had to shock him and were able to bring him back. Also every time he was moved Gary would have a seizure. They then decided to bring his body temperature down to about 94-95 degrees to prevent any farther damage to his brain, kidneys, and liver. All in which did show signs of damage due to the first cardiac arrest. At this point we were looking at 50/50 chance for recovery.

Saturday morning around 9am when I arrived I spoke with the cardiologist and neurologist. Cardiologist did more testing and Gary’s heart is only working at about 40%. This isn’t great but it’s not bad. Since coding on Friday and Saturday morning, he has been able to maintain a steady heartbeat and also maintain his own blood pressure which was a concern. Since bringing his body temperature down they did notice that the damage done to his kidneys and liver have seem to trend in a positive direction and after another CT scan was done we were able to confirm there was no brain swelling. All good things. Sunday they were trying to see what his brain can do by waking him up slowly. He was completely dependent on the ventilator at the moment. There was cognitive function and he was able to do basic commands. They then switched to see if he could breathe on his own and he was able to breathe on his own for at least 30 mins but then became very angry and thrashed around trying to pull the tube from his throat. After going through this multiple times Sunday and Monday they finally decided on Tuesday to remove the ventilator and just see what he could do. He was great and has continued to breathe by his self.

So far he has been able to communicate with people but sometimes still confused. Tuesday he was scared to be alone so I ended up just spending the night with him and have been here since. He is not sleeping right now but we are really working on that because he’s been awake for over 24 hours.

The game plan now is to figure out why this happened with procedures and tests, get him walking again which is going to require a much longer stay with an inpatient rehab, and give him a chance to be completely independent again. I will make updates as things go on.

If you can contribute anyway to help Gary with the time he will be out of work, the cost of his medical bills, everyday living expenses and any extra expenses that may occur while he is in here including making sure his family has the ability to be here for him. We’d really appreciate it. I am trying to take care of everything I can so he and the family are not under stress financially. This is going to be a longer road to recovery for Gary.

Thank you!