Help Darci Conquer Med Life Change!

It is with a great humble request that I ask for help with my wife, Darci Lopez, with this complete life-changing event. We are from Arizona and decided to take our two young kids to Disneyland in Anaheim California. After the first day at Universal Studios, it began. Darci fell ill on June 29th when she unknowingly without any provocation started to be attacked from within by a bacteria in the blood. This was not known until we started to transfer to a different hospital since they thought it was only whiplash. On Saturday June 30th we went to the ER in the morning and after a few hours she was released with pain medication. We went to the ER again in the afternoon but they kept on wanting to send us home with pain medication and a whiplash diagnosis at Anaheim Global Medical Center. After being misdiagnosed with just Whiplash at one hospital and spending eight days there the doctors had no idea what was going on or where the bacteria was attacking in her body. She was in ICU the last 3 days because they were giving her too many fluids and drowning her from within causing her to almost be intubated (they informed that they were going to) as her vitals were deathly low. I along with family members fought hard to get her transferred to UC Irvine Medical Center by ICU Medical Transport. This cost was at our own expense even though they offered to wheel her out and leave her in the parking lot for a normal ambulance to pick up (no comment) ... Once at UC Irvine Medical Center they diagnosed her with possible torticollis and started to pinpoint where the bacteria was coming from with two MRIs. The bacteria was a gram positive cocci bacteria, the stronger aggressive type that was manifesting itself from her cervical vertebra at C5 and C6. The bacteria had infiltrated the cervical bones infecting them. Two Days later they did a Corpectomy Surgery in which the C5 and C6 vertebra had to be removed replacing it with Hardware. This is the beginning of a long road to recovery in which she will have a PICC line installed for antibiotics and medications for the next eight weeks plus and she will be in a cervical collar 24/7 for 3 months at minimum during the home health care being prescribed. Along with all of this she will have a lifestyle change and her degree of mobility will only be 15 to 20 degrees left and right and limitations as well looking up and down. As we all can guess this is a great medical and personal financial burden with a situation like this. Any and all help will be greatly appreciated and in the event that the financial donations exceed our medical and personal expenses due to this situation we will donate the rest to St. Jude's Children's Hospital. We're still currently at UC Irvine Medical Center making it 17 days in the hospital with no release date yet. Thank you in advance for any type of contribution and with your help, this life-changing unexpected circumstance will become a little more manageable. Please feel free to share and pass the word. Grateful to all. God Bless.

The Lopez Family