Mommy's Recovery

In December of 2015, my mom was diagnosed with Stage 1 Tongue Cancer. Initially, the tumor on her tongue was benign, so she had surgery to remove it. Fast forward a few months later, the cancer returned, and she had another surgery. A year later, in the winter of 2016/2017, the cancer returned yet again, so my mom had a combination of chemotherapy and radiation. This caused her to stop eating since the treatment was concentrated in her mouth area. Before treatment, she had a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, and was supposed to use the feeding tube 4-5 times per day. However, that procedure was not properly conducted, so she only used the feeding tube 4-5 times over a time span of about 2 months. This caused her to lose weight extremely fast due to improper nutrition.

On April 13, 2017, my mom was admitted into intensive care due to respiratory distress because she had 3 soda cans worth of fluid in her left lung.  She could not breathe properly. A year earlier, she was diagnosed with Stage 1 Tongue Cancer, and now she has Stage 4 Lung Cancer. This is ironic because she never smoked a day in her life. On Friday, April 14th, my mom was put on a ventilator because of an incompetent nurse who overmedicated her. On Saturday, April 15th, a port was inserted into her neck, so she could receive blood pressure medication because her blood pressure was extremely low. However, this procedure was also done incorrectly. A doctor hit her carotid artery, which is an artery the size of a straw in the neck that  carries blood directly from the heart to the brain. In order to fix this mistake, another port was inserted into her groin area.  The risks of the second procedure were extremely high because if anything went wrong, she could have had a massive stroke or brain aneurism which would have been fatal. Thankfully, nothing went wrong and she is still alive today! Although, she will always have a stent in her carotid artery, and she will have to take blood thinners for the rest of her life to prevent a massive stroke.

Due to the incompentency of the staff at the first hospital, my family and I decided to transfer her to another hospital which is a lot better!  She has shown minimal improvement, and she still has a rocky road ahead of her. She has been on a ventilator for a three weeks now, and the doctors believe she won't be getting off of the ventilator anytime soon.

I'm trying to alleviate my parents of her medical expenses since they will be extremely costly because she's been in intensive care for over two weeks. Our decision to transport her to another hospital was costly because our health insurance didn't cover the intensive care ambulance that she needed, so the ambulance alone is about $5,000. Our out-of-pocket medical expenses after our health insurance totaled over $10,000 because of the chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries, medication, etc.. That's still not including the medical bills we'll recieve from the first hospital and the second hospital that she's currently at. My family and I have no clue how much our out-of-pocket medical expenses from each hospital will be, but we know they won't be affordable since she's in such critical condition.

My mom is undoubtedly the most selfless, genuine, and loving woman you'd ever meet, and anyone who know's her would probably say the exact same thing and then some. Please, donate whatever you can because any and every donation counts!


Thank you, The Narvaez Family!