Help Quinton Get Life-Saving Medical Treatment

My name is Quinton Hensley. I am a 30-year-old male in Sacramento, California, and for the last six years, I have been experiencing severe recurrent life threatening hypoglycemic episodes despite not being diabetic. These episodes have drastically increased in severity and frequency, with countless life threatening close calls. I become hypoglycemic multiple times a day, every single day (up to 15 times per day so far), no matter what I do, and cannot live any sort of normal life. I cannot get too hot, too cold, or even walk stairs for five or 10 minutes without going hypoglycemic to dangerous low blood sugar levels. At worst, my blood sugar can drop in a matter of 10 or fewer minutes from any level to the 20s or below.

In addition, I experience severe daily vomiting, nausea, stomach pain, numerous different types and areas of severe pain, dizziness, blurry vision and stars in vision, ears ringing, weakness, severe gastroparesis, potential diffuse systemic scleroderma, and newly found dangerously low adrenal hormone levels among many other symptoms. I have lost roughly 70 pounds in the last year as a result of that and also daily vomiting as well. Requiring around the clock Intravenous dextrose infusions, PPN for nutrition, and I’m still suffering severe hypoglycemic attacks multiple times daily.

I have now been hospitalized for 11+ months (I am still hospitalized m as I edit and keep sharing this months later), trying to cure the cause of my severe suffering, at Sutter, Kaiser, UC Davis, UCSF, and Stanford hospital, I have undergone extensive invasive testing, including three 72 hour fasts, a 96 hour fast, countless MRI, x-rays and CT scans, multiple pet scans, a pancreatic tail biopsy (in an area that lit up on my copper dotatate PET scan) while I had Covid, which gave me severe pancreatitis, fluid leakage in my abdomen, adrenal gland inflammation, thickening of my kidney, an infection, and sepsis at the same time,

among other complications (severe recurrent pain and worsened hypoglycemia).

On my recent dotatate pet scan, there were several nodules/lesions in the tail of my pancreas identified and a questionable area in the body identified as well, which probably is the cause of all my suffering. Whether it’s an Insulinoma or other neuroendocrine tumor, or nesidioblastosis like illness (islet cell hyperplasia), the treatment for both is surgery when all conservative management have failed, as I have failed each lifestyle modification, and medication for years and years. I also had two separate selective arterial calcium stimulation tests, which are highly rare and useful, and both support the findings on my PET scans.

As a result, my top endocrinologist at Stanford who runs the hypoglycemia clinic there and conducts research on patients suffering from low blood sugar, consulted a colleague of hers; a top endocrinologist at Mayo Clinic, a world expert on hypoglycemia and neuro endocrine tumors, who both agreed that distal pancreatectomy, a.k.a. cutting out the areas of my pancreas identified on the PET scan and calcium stimulation test is reasonable to hopefully alleviate my horrible suffering.

The “bad” tissue may extend what is visible on imaging, which is where an experienced surgical team comes into play. Even if it doesn’t perfectly cure me in the first try, it is likely to drastically improve my quality of life and further surgery would have chances of curing me fully if the initial operation didn’t anyway.

Countless doctors and healthcare professionals have told me they have never seen anything like it so severe, and that I am very lucky to still be alive.

As a result, my physicians have referred me to a higher level of care at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for further help hopefully solving and curing the medical mystery that has overtaken my life (and has so drastically also affected my mother as my caregiver watching me suffer so badly daily), in hopes of getting my life back. If I don’t find help there, I may have to fly elsewhere in the US or international, anywhere in the world, to find a very confident, experienced specialized pancreatic surgeon, since none have felt qualified or confident enough to operate on such a rare severe case that is my life yet.

Thankfully, I have been able to live with my elderly mother throughout this, otherwise I would have been homeless by now and who knows what else. I am not able to work any sort of normal job whatsoever with my daily severe suffering. The financial burden this has placed on my mother and I to provide me with the ridiculous amount of health related supplies I need to support myself to survive is unmanageable.

There is a $5000 pre-service deposit fee before Mayo Clinic will even see me since my health insurance isn’t accepted, but regardless, the money will go to travel fees, treatment costs, and daily living expenses for an extended visit for my mother and I (so she can take care of me while I am there, and after). There are also various other international clinical trials with experimental research level capabilities that may help me in terms of treatments and diagnostics as well.

My father died of pancreatic cancer when I was two and did not receive a diagnosis until he was stage four inoperable, a very similar story with my grandpa with medullary thyroid cancer that also stage four inoperable upon discovery, and I lost most of the rest of my family shortly thereafter.

Every day is a scary fight for my life and I am consistently getting drastically worse and worse despite spending years and years, trying to get help reaching out everywhere and to anyone I can think of.

Any amount is more than greatly appreciated and means the world to my mother and I. I would not be surprised if I require multiple trips to and from Mayo Clinic (or elsewhere) for my severe complicated numerous health issues, so even if this goes above and beyond the goal, every penny will go to either the trips themselves or medical supplies and food to maintain my survival before and after. God bless you all and thank you very much.

Best wishes,

Quinton and Patty Hensley