Craig Christianson Medical Bills and Transplant

Hello! We are Craig and Staci Christianson. We met, fell in love, and have been married for almost 12 yrs. We have a blended family consisting of us and our four children, two still living at home. Craig was a construction superintendent and Staci teaches high school Culinary. In June, Craig decided to seek treatment for alcohol addiction and went into an inpatient facility. He was there 13 days, when some labs came back abnormal. He was taken into the emergency room. What followed was a whirlwind of events. Not only were they concerned with original reason for the trip (seizures), he was now in kidney and liver failure. On day 4 of being in the hospital, Craig was unresponsive and a crash team was called in. Mass amounts of blood work, medication, what seemed like 20 doctors, and they were able to rouse him. His next stop was ICU for dialysis. He spent two days there and we were then transferred to another hospital. Craig was having a difficult time maintaining his blood pressure during dialysis, so for a couple weeks he was on dialysis 24/7. Once he was able to keep his blood pressure high enough, we moved to dialysis for 12 hours at a time. Then 6 hours. Finally 4 hours at a time 3 times per week. He had massive amounts of fluid being drawn from his body and countless tests on his heart. He lost 53 pounds. Thirty-seven day later, he emerged healthy enough to go home.

Our new life consists of daily medications, a new diet, and dialysis three times a week. Craig is not able to work and is waiting to be placed on a transplant list for a new liver. We hope his kidneys will regain function once he has a new liver. He is still alcohol free. Our battle is not even close to being over but we are lucky enough to have an support system.