Mum (Kristi Parker's) serious surgery

My mum Kristi is the most compassionate, brave and astounding person I'll ever know. It's not right for her, or anyone for that matter, to be suffering through what she is going through. It makes me feel horrible to be able to do nothing physically to help her pay for her surgery. She desperately needs this surgery to become whole again and be able to do things that she enjoys. Please consider helping us pay for her spinal surgery. It would mean a whole lot to us! I'm her 17 year old son Flynn and again, please help us reach our goal so she can be better.

This is a message my mum wrote to someone she really looks up to - Sam Mac - the Channel 7 Sunrise programs weather man!!! :) :) :)

I don’t want to ask for help, because I feel it’s disrespectful and so many other people have so many problem’s of their own.

I guess I’ll just have to ask anyway, because I’m hoping you understand I’m absolutely 100% not expecting anything to happen, and I more than realise you have so many other thing’s on your plate, and you have so many other causes much more important than mine.

However, long story short (I’m so sorry, it’s not really going to be short, it’s pretty involved, and I sincerely apologise!!!) I’m reaching out for help from anyone or anyplace that may possibly be able to enable me to get surgery I have just found out I desperately need. A surgery that is 70-90% likely to give me a life, and by that I mean being able to wash dishes, laundry, myself, and even do such exciting thing’s as shower and brush my teeth!!!

Funny because it’s so sad!!!

I can’t legally share the neurosurgeon report with you, but basically, paraphrasing from it just quickly, I have severe L4/5 and L5/S1 facet arthropathy with widening of the facet joint spaces, periarticular osteophytosis and a left L4/5 facet joint synovial cyst causing severe lateral recess stenosis and left L5 nerve compression.

I have also been diagnosed as having Ehlers-Danlos syndrome or Marfan syndrome.

I need to have an L4/5&L5/S1 facetectomy, pedicle screw internal fixation, posterolateral fusion and posterior interbody fusion.

That’s a lot of huge words, and really difficult to take on, even as someone with a medical background, so I apologise I can’t put it more succinctly.

What I’m able to tell you, however, is that I’m in absolute dire straits at the moment, and whilst I am happily always grateful to put myself last on the agenda, in order to keep doing that for my precious son and my family, I will NEED to have this surgery.

I am in constant, mind blowing agony. Sitting, standing, laying down, breathing, just doing anything, everything, and nothing. I don’t sleep, because the pain is so horrendous, I can’t eat because it hurts too much, I can’t keep smiling all the time as much as I want to because it all hurts so badly that even with my extensive vocabulary, I could never do it justice.

I have private health insurance (I’ve only just managed to keep paying it, despite how incredibly expensive it is, and with me being on disability support pension and carers for Flynny) but so I’ve just found out, most health insurance, no matter the level, tend not to cover procedures of the spine anymore. I’m working with the specialist on a payment plan, so despite the surgeon himself being about $9,000 out of pocket, now the problem is also that the hospital will have to bill me privately, as well as the anaesthesiologist.

The surgery will take 5 hour’s, I will need to be in the hospital for about a week, but then I could come home and hopefully be able to do more even during the recovery than I can now.

Essentially (please forgive me if I gross you out!!!!) the muscles in my back will need to be shaved back so they can get to the spine, release the nerves that are trapped and causing me to have difficulty walking and causing so much pain and bladder and bowel issue’s (again, I’m so sorry, too much!!!!) and also causing me to drag my foot most of the time when I’m even able to walk, then they’ll have to graft bone that has grown in the wrong place’s in my spine to a metal cage and then use screws and bolts etc etc etc to stabilise the spine and hopefully this will enable me to function as a “normal” person can, and actually rely on my spine to do what it should do.

To be completely honest with you, and I’m really exposing my vulnerability here and I really don’t want to offload on you, but I have exhausted every single other possibly, because it is absolutely NOT in my nature, or my genetics, or my history to give up, EVER, EVER, EVER, but I’m writing this to you from an incredibly broken place, one where I would sell my soul if it would have any value and could be used as currency in the health system, but whilst I am all too aware there are so very very many other people out there struggling, I just know that I need to stay alive for my beautiful son, who I have more than thrillingly dedicated my life to, because he is without doubt the most amazing human on this entire planet, but I don’t know how I’m going to be able to do that with a body (and spirit) that is so beyond broken right now.

I don’t know if this message even makes any sense. All I know is that I’m writing it under duress because I don’t want to have to involve anyone else in something I should be able to handle myself, but I know realistically I can’t, and I don’t know who to reach out to in order to get where I need to be.

I’m not enjoying anything in my life. I don’t have a life. All I have is constant agonising, debilitating pain. I see no future. I don’t see how I’m going to keep going like this. I can’t even lie in bed reading because it hurts too much. I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t lie still.

I have coped with chronic pain for decades. I’ve managed. I’ve always been able to see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the light has faded and I’m terrified.

I’m so incredibly sorry to dump this on you, and to even have bothered you with a message about it.

It certainly isn’t your problem.

But I don’t know. Maybe I’m praying you might be able to mention this to someone, and they might be able to think of a way I can raise fund’s, or just SOMETHING.

But I’ve run out of ideas, and you just never know.

I will try to attach information about the diagnosis listed, and hope it might help with explaining better than I can.

Thank you

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinal_fusion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehlers%E2%80%93Danlos_syndromes