Jill's Multiple Sclerosis Medical Fund

It is always difficult to see a loved one struggle with their health, especially when it's your child. My daughter, Jill Timm, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) when she was just 20 years old (she is 41 now). She has been fighting the disease and has been doing well until recently.

Jill is a mother of two, Kaden (23) and Bella (13). She has a career as a 911 dispatcher and has served as one for 17 years. She loves and is dedicated to her career, her department and truly helping the citizens within her jurisdiction. She has been unable to work since the middle of February due to complicationswith her MS. Jill was also working a second side job up until the following events which left her unable to continue that job as it was a physically demanding job.

On February 1st, Jill had her yearly MRI to look for new MS activity in her brain. The MRI was unchanged and was cause for celebration. However, within a few weeks she began to experience severe vertigo, double vision and nystagmus. This left her unable to hardly see and unable to walk on her own. This occurrence was misdiagnosed as vertigo as she had just had a clean MRI. It was in fact the beginning of a MS relapse flair. It took a worsening of symptoms over the next month, an ER visit, multiple doctors appointments, and more MRIs and testing to diagnose that this was actually her MS. The damage in her brain was in the brain stem. Jill did a week of high dose steroids (methylprednisolone) to stop the flair. The steroids cause horrible side effects and essentially caused her to have Bradycardia and severe hypertension along with several other side effects.

Two weeks after finishing the course of IV steroids she began to show symptoms of another MS relapse flair. Jill was unable to walk on her own and had multiple falls a day. She again had to undergo multiple doctors appointments, including another ER visit, another MRI, and testing. This MS replase flair is in her Cerebellum. She again had to do another week of high dose methylprednisolone to stop the flair. This is dangerous as doctors like to wait at least 4 weeks before doing another round of the methylprednisolone. However, if this relapse was left for another two weeks, it could leave her permanently disabled and unable to walk independently or without several falls throughout the day for the rest of her life.

As of today, Jill is still fighting the debilitating side effects of the two rounds of treatment. This included a stay in the ER due to her blood sugar being elevated in the 700's. Jill is diabetic and the methylprednisolone raises a diabetics blood sugar to an extremely dangerous level. Jill is also a candidate for plasma exchange to help her brain and body heal faster and better. If the plasma exchange is done, it will last 12 days and require her to be off of work for another 3-4 weeks for that treatment.

All of this medical treatment has been such a financial burden on Jill, especially with the loss of her second job. She is under a lot of stress as her medical bills have begun to come in. She must meet her deductible and then the remainder of what insurance does not cover for of each test, appointment, IV infusion, MRI, and possibly the plasma exchange (which is over $100,000 alone) and it is unknown how much, or if insurance will cover any of the plasma exchange. At this point, her medical bills will range around $25,000 thousands without the plasma exchange. Any help to relieve Jill's stress of this major financial burden would be so meaningful as finances should be the last thing Jill should be worried about at this time. She will be unable to ever return to a second job as working too much could put her right back into MS relapse territory. I am not asking for the full coverage of all of her out-of-pocket medical bills, but just a good starting off point. Both her and I would greatly appreciate any help to this cause.