Please help Mark pay for surgery to fix heart failure

The $38,000 is cash payment for Abbott, surgeon and the Barostim device.

I have heart failure and kidney failure but my cardiac surgeon believes it can be fixed. My respiratory illness got really bad in 2018. Toxic air in my classrooms at Eden Prairie High School before we had the system fixed caused my body to be hypersensitive to bad air. I came out of my time from that period in 2005-2009. Now my heart surgeon says that he believes a new technology will solve all my problems. My problem is that my heart won't pump enough water, and I have a huge buildup in my body, even with medicinal therapy. This causes me to have no quality of life. I have a lot of fatigue, difficulty walking, and living life doing the usual and most basic things.

In December 2023, my heart failure showed that I had an ejection fraction of 35. My cardiologist said that we had to try more medicines to see if they would work to control the excess water. The medicines almost killed me, landing me in the hospital for nine days in September with heart and kidney failure. My creatinine was 4.4, and my blood pressure was almost non-existent. I am grateful to survive.

Because my ejection fraction has improved but none of my other symptoms have, my heart surgeon said that an implant called Barostim will solve all of my problems in his professional opinion. This excites me so much. However, I would need to pay the surgery costs myself due to not meeting the standard yet for ejection fraction.

I really want to return to living. I want to be active and contribute again. I want to touch people's lives. I want to be more present for my family.

How much do I need to raise?

Checking the costs,

Abbott Northwestern says it is $38,000 paying cash.

Would you please help me? I taught seniors for 35 years and 33 years at Eden Prairie High School.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Loads of Love

Mark Jerry Bray, MA

Since December 2023 I started at Abbott Heart Failure Institute once they accepted me as I was holding steady but at a much lower level of energy to live each day.

I had done dozens of hours of research and found that a new MInnesota made FDA approved device would have a 94% success rate of fixing my challenge of my body holding onto excess water. It's called Barostim.

I viewed many testimonial videos and talked with several people including a wonderful person at Barostim. She and I started talking a lot. We clicked on sharing stories of children and pets. She suggested that I could go to one of the presently four Minnesota cardiologists trained to implant the neurotelepathy device.

I chose the Minneapolis Heart Failure Institute at Abbott Northwestern which is the closest to me. When I met with the cardiologist that I selected, he said that before I would be able to get the implant that we had to demonstrate that pharmaceuticals did not work as he felt there was a lot of room to improve on my present state of trying to offload the water from what Mayo and Fairview had done.

I consented but because my mother had similar challenges in her life and ended up with kidney failure at a young age I stressed that I did not damage to happen to my kidneys from the medicines as my mother had happen. He assured me all would be fine.

He put me on several medicines and by July we had made some progress but my body still held onto significant water, and it really dragged me down allowing only a limited number of activities daily before exhaustion.

He wanted to see how much water so I went through the dreaded catherization. This is literally where I got water boarded. For brevity I won't explain that debacle on the operating table at Abbott Northwestern. After the catherization he put me on a new set of drugs, and from there i started to go downhill even further.

All of my mychart indicators for every reading went bad. They either went up or they went down the wrong direction. Two weeks before my nine day hospitalization which ended Sunday, he increased the Bumex drug to 2.5 tablets twice a day. What had been huge nauseau and stomach upset turned into full blown painful feelings of Montezuma's revenge with explosive diarrhea

I kept emphasizing that I strongly felt the drugs were causing my descent. I slept most of every day, and tried to do something fun when I could with my son such as going on our four wheelers which Prior Lake allows, or to Charlies on Prior, but it took all of my energy and back to sleep after each outing. That is no way to live life.

At this point the Friday before Labor Day my cardiologist team said they felt that the drugs were not causing my condition, and I had been exposed to food poisoning. I was to schedule with my primary. When I called, I scheduled the earliest day on Friday, September 6th in the afternoon.

The rest of that weekend and week proved like nothing that I had gone through before. And to complicate matters it became clear while hospitalized that another drug that the team had put me on was giving me very sore pecs/nipples such as someone stabbing me with a filet knife in each one and grinding it around inside.

Now that I am forever off that drug the symptoms are going away. I'm told that I am lucky as I could have lactated! Imagine the embarrassment. The way it was my son and others laughed at me when I said I don't know if this intense pain behind my nipples is related or not, but it is maddening. They looked at me as if I were imagining it and with a look of pity.

I saw my primary, and he thought it was a drug causing the problems in my chest, and he had a lot of blood panels drawn. He went through each drug in his PDR but we ran out of time. We didn't reach any conclusion as we didn't have the time in our appointment window, but he sent me home with a stool kit to see if the dysentery was an infection.

That night I was so tired and out of it that while I went to bed and my Springers were next to me, I heard call after call coming through on my cell. I finally looked at the screen exasperated at who might be calling at 10:30 on a Friday when I had no energy left to deal with anything and saw that the screen said simply "HEALTH".

I picked up and the voice said Mr. Bray, where are you? Thinking is was spam I said I am where. you think that I am. She said again are you at home? I demanded to know was calling. She said you had blood drawn this afternoon at your primary? I said who are you? She finally said she was calling from the Heart Failure Institute at Abbott Northwestern and that my potassium and creatine levels were off the charts, and that I had to go to an ER immediately. I was so tired that I said can't I go tomorrow as I am already in bed snuggled with my girls (Springers). She said we don't think you will make it until tomorrow.

My mom and I always have looked better than we are is what people tell us. when we are ill In fact two nurses in my neighborhood have maintained without seeing me firsthand personally that I am faking all of my health issues. One lives across from me.

I knew that i could not let the paramedics into my house with my dogs as they had come in during May 2022 when over 15 first responders were in my house but my son was here to help with my girls. I asked the woman what is your name. She said Zam Zam. I thought cool name. I am so grateful to her persistence. I said I would make my way to my garage and wait there for the ambulance to arrive. I then called the ambulance. She said she would call back in an hour to make sure that I was enroute to ER. Her call came as I was being treated in ER Room 30 at Abbott.

My girls were confused and had scared faces, but I abruptly eft them in my bedroom and made my way downstairs to the garage and sat next to my car.

As I waited for the first responders the light went off to the garage, and I could hear sirens approaching. Several emergency vehicles poured onto the street, and neighbors left their houses to view the spectacle of what was to happen.

I flashed the lights on my car so that the first responders could see me in the dark garage.

They were great. The firefighters went full-time in my city in 2023, and they were like the first responders Amy Klobuchar poses with at the State Fair, buffed and tan. They said hello handsome and good looking. I did not feel any of that as I could barely sit Let's get you better here. They put me on the stretcher and into the ambulance.

Inside the back of the ambulance after doing vitals the medic said I don't know how you are still awake and not passed out. I said it's been a part of my constitution and my mother was the same way……some jokes were told as I mentioned I have an ICD and the female medic accidentally said how long have you had your IUD? I laughed and said that I didn't have one, not yet!:) I hadn't been to a public school to get the surgery. We all laughed and she was embarrassed.

I assured her that I didn't mind as it was all in good fun. We were bumping along in the ambulance as this transpired. Have you ever ridden in an ambulance? It's really rocky and bumpy. We went from my house to downtown Abbott Northwestern due to that is where my team was and enroute the medics were stabilizing me. Bumping along with lights and sirens off we went to Minneapolis. I hoped it was still there after being burned down.

When we arrived at Abbott Northwestern Hospital there were eight or nine ambulances in queue waiting and due to my near "death" they had them move aside and we went around and immediately in. I heard the chatter and the radio talk of my medic to the people inside. They I was rushed out and they ran down hallways to a room where I got the help that I needed to rebound.

They kept asking me if I had a living will and should they do life support should something get even worse. I answered, and went into ER room 30. After all the work to put me right, I was there all night and then the next morning moved to a private room in cardiac, where I stayed for the next nine days only twice being allowed to leave it.

At least it had a great view, and the staff (nurses) were outstanding overall including the aides. Of course I had my favorites.

Now I am home and the key is to only take in 2L a day and keep up with a regimen sorted out as a transition to allow me to gain strength.

I kept emphasizing the Heart Failure Treatment Barostim implant as the long term successful strategy. . There is a lot to tell on these exchanges, including at times terse exchanges with cardiology and nephrology. I said my kidneys were great until starting in July 2024, and that's documented going back to 2005. The meds crashed my kidneys and almost crashed me. I never had food poisoning.

Once I stopped the Bumex, the symptoms abated. When they wanted me back on Bumex Monday, the symptoms started coming right back.

Now I'm on a drug to hold me until I can get stronger and obtain the implant. The implant will allow me to return to my feisty self.

I'm on the phone a lot lately. Health Partners tells me the device is not covered under my medical devices in my Eden Prairie Schools Health Plan. It is classified as investigational.

My doctor can seek authorization, and then they said Health Partners would deny it, and then we could appeal. I learned that yesterday. My heart surgeon/Cardiologist said he firmly believes that the device would solve all of my problems.

A nuclear test done at Abbott showed that I am still retaining huge amounts of water. He said Monday to me if you want to pay $50,000 we can do it. I told him that I will figure out how to fund it if my insurance won't, and I've spent way more than that fighting for student rights systemically and winning during my 33 years at Eden Prairie High School. I spent thousands on my lawyers helping the high school create systemic policies to combat the idea that boys will be boys and harass females; thousands on lawyers to help better systemic treatment for students who are diverse and thousands fighting for LGBTQ Rights and their right to be safe so that they can learn.

Three times I was suspended because I wouldn't capitulate and do only what I wanted with human rights in my classroom. My suspensions had nothing to do with my teaching. I was offered enticements, ordered not to talk about any of it, and kicked out of the classroom during each battle. That's how I was raised. If. you know who Malcolm Moos is or who Hubert Humphrey is, and I know you do, they taught me that. So did my grandparents and my mother. My father not so much.

However, back to matter at hand, I am better now than from July on. I've stressed I've tried enough drugs and the Heart Failure Treatment Barostim implant is the best path. It tricks the brain to make the heart and kidneys do their job better. And i joked I already have one implant, why not symmetry on the right? Again my heart surgeon says he believes it will solve all of my problems, and think of the money that it will save in the long term.

I can assure you my nine days of hospitalization is a lot more than $50 grand.

Out of this trial so many wonderful human connections came from all of this at Abbott that I will describe in the future so it was also a positive experience. I know long answer here but it really is truncated!!!! I wanted to provide detail and a more three dimensional answer even though truncated, and I thank you Annette for asking. I hope you are well also.

Thanks to my son @Matt Bray who first watched my fur babies and to Nathan N. Van Ort for watching them over the weekend. Nate even did a lot of cleaning for me which needed to happen which I did not expect. That touches me greatly.