Help Anthony Hoath Recover and Remember His Life

All the information about my medical events these past few months is being recounted by those around me, as I don’t have any memories due to the nature of my illness.

On September 8th, I had a grand mal seizure at home with my girlfriend being the only one there with me. I have never had a seizure before, there is no family history of seizures, and it came out of nowhere. After getting me through the seizure and into a recovery position, the ambulance was called. They came and began to transport me to Promedica Hospital. While en route, I had another grand mal seizure. When I arrived at the hospital, as I have been told, I was heavily sedated to try and keep me unconscious while they figured out what was going on. During my time in the ER, they pulled spinal fluid to test for various diseases, and 3 out of 4 vials came out bloody (not supposed to be). Along with spinal fluid, they took blood and found that my white blood cells were triple the amount they were supposed to be, a sign of a very bad infection somewhere in my body. That, paired with the bloody spinal fluid, led the staff to believe I had somehow contracted meningitis (an inflammation of the membranes (meninges) that cover the brain and spinal cord) and immediately put me on 3 different antibiotics around the clock, sometimes putting all three into me at the same time. I had gone fully septic and my kidneys had shut down, hitting only 30% function. They told me when I arrived I was on death's door. After a 6-day hospital stay, full of isolation rooms, infectious disease specialists, and every test under the sun done to me, I was released, lucky to be alive, albeit with a midline, a line that goes directly into the artery that goes to my heart, and the next ten days of outpatient antibiotic infusions twice a day to look forward to at the Coldwater Cancer Center.

After the infusions were complete and the midline was able to be removed, I began to feel like I was somewhat back to normal, not 100 percent but better than before. I was able to go back to work for a month or so, but then on November 6th, 2 months later almost to the day, I had another seizure. I had 4 grand mal seizures all within an hour of each other and then proceeded to be stuck in an absent seizure where they had to sedate and intubate me to ensure my airways wouldn’t collapse. I was taken to Promedica for emergency treatment but then was transferred by ambulance to Ascension Borgess' NICU (Neurological Intensive Care Unit) where I was for 6 days under the close care of an amazing team of nurses and doctors. They had me on seizure medication as soon as I arrived, but after one day of being there, I was still having seizures through the medicine. They then added a second medication along with setting up an EEG to read my brain activity to see what was happening. It helped us find out that this seizure had taken more than the first set of seizures from my normal life. This time, all the seizures localized on my hippocampus, the memory center of the brain, making it where at the time I couldn't even remember 5-minute time increments. With time and an intensive medication regimen and rehabilitation efforts, it has become marginally better. I still have extreme difficulties with remembering day to day though, making going back to work impossible right now.

Unfortunately, this is still an ongoing fight, as I had another seizure on January 14th due to my medication not working as needed to stop the seizure from happening. This complicates things as it resets the timeline needed to be seizure-free and to be allowed to return to normal day-to-day activities by at least six months, and possibly up to a year depending on what the neurologist deems necessary.

For those who know me, I have and always will be a fighter, no matter the situation, I won’t stop now. I will be transparent about where your donations to my cause are going. The things I need help raising money for are:

Medical bills and treatment costs - Hospital bills stack up quickly. Trust me.

Day-to-day essentials - Keeping the lights on, the bills paid, and food in our stomachs while I am not able to work.

Lightening the load off my girlfriend who has been taking care of everything from transportation to financial burden since this started.

Last but not least, I want to say thank you to anybody taking the time out of their day to read this, and an extra special thanks to those who have donated or spread awareness for my cause!

With thanks and appreciation to all of you,

-Anthony Hoath