Medical Expenses for Heidi Rogers

My name is Heidi, and my 2022 has been one heck of an "adventure". Shortly before Christmas of 2021, a large mass started growing in my left thigh...and it was growing FAST. After meeting with my primary care doctor in January, she immediately sent me off for an x-ray and MRI. When she called to follow up with the MRI results, I was told I needed to see an oncologist as soon as possible, and she had sent my info over to one of the few sarcoma specialists in my state, and had me put on his waitlist.

I met my oncologist on a Friday - February 4th, and as soon as he saw my MRI, I was being rushed in for chest xrays as he cleared part of his schedule for the following Monday, just a few days later, for an emergency biopsy. By then, I already knew it was very bad news, and tried my best to be grateful that my lungs and bones were all clear and the nasty tumor hadn't gone beyond my quadricep muscles.

On April 7th, the tumor was successfully removed. My oncologist told me he'd never seen anything like it in all his 25+ years of treating people; it was eating up my quad muscles at an extremely aggressive rate, and had almost doubled in size by the time my surgery to remove it came around. I was barely walking by that time because I was in so much pain, and I was just so happy it got evicted (although less happy about how much healthy surrounding tissue also had to be removed) that I couldn't be very excited about how "special" I am, haha!

I was hoping for an easy recovery after all of this, but unfortunately so many things went wrong for me. In recovery, I found out the hard way I can't have morphine; I woke up from surgery in the worst pain I have ever felt in my life, and so I was given morphine in my IV, and immediately went into anaphylactic shock and stopped breathing. My oncologist used surgical glue over my incision, and I developed an allergic reaction to that! And worst of all, instead of getting better after coming home, I was deteriorating...and two weeks post-op I was diagnosed with a blood clot caused by the surgery that runs from my ankle to my groin.

I am now struggling to heal on so many fronts - from the tumor resection surgery, to the allergic reactions, to the massive blood clot in my leg - it has become a much bigger struggle than I anticipated. I can't start physical therapy to use my leg again or start radiation treatments to clean up anything left behind by the tumor until the blood clot is stabilized, so my healing has been set back significantly, and I have so many more medical bills than I planned for.

Things aren't going great because of all this, and I can use all the help I can get. Donations will be used to:

1) Help with medical expenses that insurance won't cover, especially since I had to see a specialist and be treated at a very specific facility.

2) Help me eat and pay my bills while I'm out of work during recovery - I've been on unpaid medical leave since April 7th and am still not cleared to go back to work.

3) Help me pay for physical therapy/rehab, radiation treatments, and any further treatment that might be needed.

Thank you for supporting me during this difficult and frightening time. I'm trying my best to stay positive and get through this, and any help you can give means the world to me.