Vanessa Meyers' Medical Expenses
Donation protected
On New Year’s Eve, Vanessa fell asleep around 6:45 PM and woke up around 2:00 AM with flu symptoms though accompanied by numbness in her hands and feet.
We went to Kaiser in Modesto and got blood work done for her but they just said she was dehydrated and needed to up her fluids as a result of the flu. We tried everything but she couldn’t keep anything down, her headaches were getting worse and the tingling in her hands and feet was starting to creep up her legs.
On Friday we drove back to Redwood City from Groveland because it was getting worse and she was treated for Migraine symptoms and the flu. An MRI was clean, with traces of an ongoing migraine, so they discharged her and sent us home to treat the headache, telling us that the numbness would go away with the headache.
Saturday morning, Vanessa woke up and couldn't get out of bed by herself. Her feet, hands, legs and arm were almost fully numb and I had to pick her up, walk her to the bathroom, etc. She took a nap in the morning and when she woke up, I noticed that one of her eyes was slightly droopy and when I asked her to smile, only half of her face lifted.
Fearing a stroke, we rushed her back to the ER in Redwood City where she was ultimately diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) [Gee-Len-bar-ay] and Miller-Fisher (another form of GBS). Brought on by the flu virus, Guillain-Barre is like a freak issue where the antibodies in her blood suddenly decide to begin attacking her own peripheral nervous system, breaking down the myelin sheathing of her nerves and causing very rapid onset paralysis.
By 6pm on Saturday, she was having a very difficult time breathing and was forced to be intubated, and she has been having a ventilator breathe for her since that time. Thankfully, the Guillain-Barre is treatable with an intravenous immunoglobulin drip (IVIG) that strips those rouge antibodies from the blood over the course of several days. The problem though, is that they need her awake in order to monitor her nervous system function, so she has a tube down her throat breathing for her, a feeding tube down her nose, she can’t speak, but she has to be awake for all of it. She has 4 IVs in her arms and they giving her fluids, fentanyl for pain, proPOFol as a sedative and then the IVIG to treat the condition.
She has already undergone 3 treatments of the IVIG but did not respond well to the 4th, which was administered last night. Her heart rate dropped to 35 bpm and she was having all kinds of pain, they are stopping the treatment for a few days while they figure out why her heart is slowing down so much. Once they get her back on the IVIG, she should start to regain some motor function and after several months of physical therapy, she is expected to make a full recovery and be back to normal.
If you have any questions or would like to support them in other ways please contact Nicole Case via facebook or text (650) [phone redacted]
We went to Kaiser in Modesto and got blood work done for her but they just said she was dehydrated and needed to up her fluids as a result of the flu. We tried everything but she couldn’t keep anything down, her headaches were getting worse and the tingling in her hands and feet was starting to creep up her legs.
On Friday we drove back to Redwood City from Groveland because it was getting worse and she was treated for Migraine symptoms and the flu. An MRI was clean, with traces of an ongoing migraine, so they discharged her and sent us home to treat the headache, telling us that the numbness would go away with the headache.
Saturday morning, Vanessa woke up and couldn't get out of bed by herself. Her feet, hands, legs and arm were almost fully numb and I had to pick her up, walk her to the bathroom, etc. She took a nap in the morning and when she woke up, I noticed that one of her eyes was slightly droopy and when I asked her to smile, only half of her face lifted.
Fearing a stroke, we rushed her back to the ER in Redwood City where she was ultimately diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease called Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS) [Gee-Len-bar-ay] and Miller-Fisher (another form of GBS). Brought on by the flu virus, Guillain-Barre is like a freak issue where the antibodies in her blood suddenly decide to begin attacking her own peripheral nervous system, breaking down the myelin sheathing of her nerves and causing very rapid onset paralysis.
By 6pm on Saturday, she was having a very difficult time breathing and was forced to be intubated, and she has been having a ventilator breathe for her since that time. Thankfully, the Guillain-Barre is treatable with an intravenous immunoglobulin drip (IVIG) that strips those rouge antibodies from the blood over the course of several days. The problem though, is that they need her awake in order to monitor her nervous system function, so she has a tube down her throat breathing for her, a feeding tube down her nose, she can’t speak, but she has to be awake for all of it. She has 4 IVs in her arms and they giving her fluids, fentanyl for pain, proPOFol as a sedative and then the IVIG to treat the condition.
She has already undergone 3 treatments of the IVIG but did not respond well to the 4th, which was administered last night. Her heart rate dropped to 35 bpm and she was having all kinds of pain, they are stopping the treatment for a few days while they figure out why her heart is slowing down so much. Once they get her back on the IVIG, she should start to regain some motor function and after several months of physical therapy, she is expected to make a full recovery and be back to normal.
If you have any questions or would like to support them in other ways please contact Nicole Case via facebook or text (650) [phone redacted]
Organizer and beneficiary
Nicole Case
Organizer
Menlo Park, CA
Jake Meyers
Beneficiary