OLD CAMPAIGN (18 MONTHS AGO)
ATTENTION: THIS IS AN OLD CAMPAIGN FROM MARCH 2018
FOR THE NEW CAMPAIGN: —> http://helpsavehugo.com (in English and Dutch)
FOR THE NEW GOFUNDME LINK —> https://www.gofundme.com/f/teamhugo
FOR ACTUAL UPDATES ON HUGO: —> https://www.facebook.com/helpsavehugo
FOR OLD DONORS: —> an ebook about last year’s campaign is in your email :-)
THANK YOU AND HAVE A GREAT DAY ❤️
MARCH 2018: BELOW YOU FIND THE TEXT OF AN OLD CAMPAIGN)
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Meet our dear friend Hugo, a 28 year old creative guy who loves to travel, meet people, play sports and enjoy the simple things in life like meeting a friend for coffee. As of today, none of these things are possible anymore as he's spending his days laying in bed diagnosed with a late stage chronic Lyme disease or MSIDS. At this point, there's one option left that could save his life which is a bone marrow stem cell surgery with assisting therapies. As he has no brothers or sisters and both of his parents already passed away, he is truly facing this thing on his own. That's why he needs help now.
So what's Hugo's story and how did he end up getting so sick? Everything seems to have started at a very young age. During his childhood, without brothers and sisters, he was already immediately confronted with illness early on. At age 3, his dad was diagnosed with a braintumor, and at age 13, also his mother started to become sick with a mysterious illness (that they now believe to have been Lyme disease too). Although his parents fought for many years, his dad passed when Hugo was 15 and his mom when he was 24.
Through this entire process of taking care and living with sick parents, Hugo had already started feeling sick himself in his early twenties. One doctor visit led to another and another, while he got sicker and sicker. Although he was first diagnosed with pfeiffer, PTSD, multiple burn outs, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrom (CFS), he continued his high pace life pushing himself through law school, running his own start-up company with friends and still trying to participate in a rich social life while watching his mother slowly die.
Over the last five years, bit by bit he had to give up things that he loved. First his university, while he just needed 20 more points for his bachelor. Then his love for sports, especially tennis. Then his start-up company, as he wasn't properly functioning anymore. Bit by bit he started losing more of his abilities, while still pretending to the world and himself that everything was going to be fine and that he would push through on his 'always be positive attitude'.
Despite everything he had given up, in 2016 he decided to give his life one last push leaving everything behind to stay with his Canadian love, who wasn't allowed to stay in the Netherlands and sell everything he had to travel the world and create an online business. Although the idea was beautiful, the harsh reality of traveling while being chronically sick quickly hit and his health declined even further until he literally went KO in Nepal in april 2017, not knowing where he was or even who he was.
Fast forward to August 2017, after having been to four different countries for various medical testing, he finally got clearly diagnosed with a late stage chronic Lyme disease - or MSIDS - as they are referring to it more often these days. In layman's terms this means that his immune system is severly compromised, there is tons of inflammation found in his body as well as over ten different bacterial and viral infections spread through his entire body that are literally breaking him down more every single day.
[For more information about the diagnosis and medical background information, please scroll down as you can find this below.]
Over the last 6 months, Hugo has spent his last savings on tons of therapies and treatments, such as herbal antibiotic protocols, emotional healing practises, an awful lots of supplements and more extreme therapies such as high dose ozon gas blood transfusions. As his body has worsened so quickly, he has one option left which is a bone marrow stem cell surgery with accompanying treatments. Unfortunately this isn't insured by the Dutch medical care as these are still experimental treatments in the Netherlands, while in many others countries this already belongs to the main medical practise.
The treatment that could save his life is in Germany and consists of some rather intensive and heavy procedures, such as a bone marrow surgery and two days of blood washing during an artificially induced fever. However at this point Hugo is willing to do anything to survive this.
[For more information about the treatments and the costs of everything, please scroll down to the bottom of this page where you'll find an explanation of the treatmentplan with the overall costs of every single thing for total transparency.]
With this treatment, Hugo will get a chance to kill most of the bacterial and viral infections and start rebuilding his immune system with the help of an army of new stem cells. Although this entire treatment is different for every person and usually it takes about one year to truly see the results of it, medically speaking this is his last and final shot to help him survive this.
UPDATES DURING HIS HEALING JOURNEY
Since Hugo is a vlogger, you can obviously expect updates during the treatment throughout his socials, however these will most likely be done by the people accompanying him as he'll need to focus fully on recovering.
DONATE DIRECTLY TO SAVE 8.55% + EUR0.25
If you feel you would like to donate directly to Hugo and thereby also saving a lot on the transaction, please find his bank information below.
NAME: H A RIJPSTRA
BANK ACCOUNT: NL37 INGB 0004 628582
BIC / SWIFT CODE: INGBNL2A
EXTRA MEDICAL INFORMATION
Late stage chronic lyme disease is a controversial subject and the world is slowly adapting to new insights. When you hear about Lyme’s disease, the medical world used to look for the bite of a specific tick that carries the original Lyme bacteria, called borrelia B. However right now we know that Lyme Disease isn’t just about that specific bacteria as many ticks also carry a lot of other infections with them, the so called co-infections that can even cause more harm than the initial Lyme bacteria. Lyme disease has grown up and is so much more than just the result of a tick bite. It is now believed to be transmitted by mosquitoes and other vectors and seems to be a worldwide epidemic.
Once the various bacteria are in the human body, they suppress the immune system and stimulate a body wide inflammatory cascade. The effects on those infected include attacks on multiple organs and systems in the body, including the skin, brain and nervous tissue, the most notable being the heart and brain.
On top of actually contracting the these bacteria, what we now also know is that for all these bacteria to spread through the body, the person already needs to have a compromised immune system which is not able to fight them anymore and on top of that needs to be under a lot of stress for a prolonged period of time.
There’s so much more information and things to be told, such as how these bacteria also reactive other viruses in the body, how hard they are to eradicate with antibiotics and other treatments and how it slowly deteriorates the health of a person.
So where before the medical world only used to focus on only this specific Lyme bacteria, they are now slowly adapting to new insighs by the renowned authorities on Lyme disease such as Richard I. Horowitz, MD, who is one of the founding members of ILADS (the International Lyme & Associated Diseases Society), the leader on Lyme disease research and education. He has actually come up with a better name for this disease, which is MSIDS (Multiple Systemic Infectious Disease Syndrome). For more information we refer his most recent book which is on the New York Times Science Best Seller List, Why Can't I Get Better?.
We know this was a lot of theory but we want to explain exactly what is happening and give as much information as possible. However, to make things as easy as possible, we can simply say that to get a chronic Lyme Disease / MSIDS, a person needs:
1) a tick bite or other animal that can be a vector of these bacteria
2) an existing problem that involves the immune system
3) stress, or as in medical terms you would say 'damage to the cellular terrain'
Watch this link for more information.
In Hugo’s case, he totally collapsed in April 2017 in Nepal, but had already been experiencing many health issues since 2013. In fact, he had already been through medical processed for years where he had been diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and later also Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, two diseases that are known to actually mimic some of the symptoms of a chronic Lyme disease. All the therapies and ways he tried to find healing for that, including cognitive behavioural therapy, acupuncture, haptotherapy, hypnotherapy, physiotherapy, detox programs in Thailand and India, mindfulness trainings, brain retraining techniques, meditation retreats, strict nutrition regimes and even two long rehabilitation programs (6 & 9 months) didn’t bring any improvement, so for a long time he always stayed in the dark of the true cause of his symptoms. Finally in August 2017, he got diagnosed with a chronic Lyme disease, including having many of the co-infections and reactivation of many viruses throughout body.
1) So how did Hugo get infected?
Option 1: Bit by insect at young age
- Hugo does not remember any incident like that but a high % of the people with chronic Lyme disease never experienced a tick bite
- Impossible to verify because both parents have passed
Option 2:
- Mother like has died from same condition as Hugo has almost her exact symptoms
- Lyme disease is transferable from infected mother to unborn child.
- Due to passing of mother impossible to verify
- Chance is highly likely as often a foetus gets contracted with Lyme disease through pregnancy often leading to death of the baby, and Hugo’s mom had two miscarriages before him.
2) Did he have an already weakened immune system?
Yes, his immune system was already severely comprised during his late teenage years. After having had a long Pfeiffer (Epstein Barr Virus), he always kept experiencing throat and ear infections for years. He was sick very often and doctors could never find out why his immune system wasn’t functioning properly.
3) Did he have a lot of stress?
Yes, Hugo has had a lot of stress through his life. As stated before, when he was 3 years old, his dad got diagnosed with a brain tumor having only 6 months to live. In the end, he died when Hugo was 15, while Hugo’s mom had already starting to become sick from an unknown disease, from what we now know has mostly likely been a late stage chronic Lyme disease. His mother died while he was 24, so basically the first 24 years of his life he lived with sick parents continuously without any brothers or sisters and at age 23, he started to get his first bigger health issues. He has actually been in psychotherapy for years being diagnosed with a depersonalisation disorder and post traumatic stress disorder based on all the childhood trauma.
Conclusion: Hugo has either had a tick bite at young age of has contracted it through birth, his immune system was already weakened and he was under a tremendous amount of stress through his life, creating the so called ‘perfect storm’ for a chronic Lyme disease.
Although this diagnose is controversial and not acknowledged in the Netherlands (they focus only on active Lyme infections closely after the contraction) and some of their testing is not able to detect chronic infections, they are experimenting and doing research in the Radboud University Hospital in Nijmegen with newer LTT tests that can actually detect chronic infections. Hugo has also done all the available testing in the regular medical circuit. There they found out that his viral loads were too high, his inflammation markers were also way too high and the same goes for the results of his spinal tab. On top of all the results of the Dutch medical available options, he went to Finland, Germany and Italy to do more testing that wasn’t available yet in the Netherlands as they are currently doing research with them as mentioned before. When the tests came back from all countries, as mentioned before Hugo tested positive for a chronic Lyme infection, for many of the co-infections, they detected an extremely compromised immune system with natural killer cells barely functioning anymore and there were also found extreme high viral loads of some specific viruses. All these testings just confirmed what was already found in the Dutch regular system before and thus he had his diagnose in August of 2017.
As soon as he had his diagnose, he started investigating everything that he could. He purchased all the leading literature and got himself into all the latest scientific papers. As his cognitive decline was already worsening by the day, some of his friends helped him to decide what was the best treatment for him and where he should be treated. Luckily he had found a great ILADS medical doctor who gave him the options to start with a nutritional program, supplementation to kill the bacteria and strengthen the immune system and lastly high dose ozon therapy, which seems to be one of the most promising therapies based on the ILADS conferences. Next to that, he also advised to work on retraining the brain as Hugo had been under a terrible amount for stress for years, so his amygdala (survival brain) was probably sending off stress signals continuously breaking the body down even further.
Last August Hugo has started doing ozone therapies, continuing and refining a strict nutritional plan designed by a university schooled nutrition therapist and following a specific supplements protocol created for his specific condition based on all his testing results, while also doing his absolute best to eliminate stress and retrain his brain. Unfortunately after 6 months of trying to do everything as well as possible, things unfortunately got a lot worse.
Right now, he’s mostly bed bound and had to accept help from his friends and a special home care team who help him with cleaning, cooking, his administration and other tasks that he is cognitively not able to do.
Although there's more stability now, the last six months have been the most stressfull months of his entire life thereby contributing to more damage being done since all these infections basically feed on stress. For that reason his situation just worsens everyday just by being and staying in this situation. His immune system is severely compromised, he has many bacterial and viral infections spread through his body and the inflammation is spread everywhere. As his body is currently very weak, the doctors don’t even want to put him on antibiotics even more and instead really focus on getting his immune system stronger and stronger while killing and eliminating all the viruses and bacteria at the same time.
As previous therapies and treatments haven’t worked, and his condition is worsening quickly, there’s one option left that can save his life, which is a stem cell bone marrow treatment and assisting therapies.
PLEASE DONATE WHAT YOU CAN AND SHARE THIS VIDEO.
AND SAVE HUGO'S LIFE!
COST OVERVIEW
1) 4 weeks of Stem Cell Therapy and Surgery (EUR28000), where Hugo his body will first be cleaned and detoxed through many IV's, before he will get a bone marrow surgery in which they take stem cells out of his body that will later be reinjected into his own body.
2) Two days of Hyperthermia / Blood Washing (EUR11000), where Hugo will be put to sleep while his body will be brought into an artificial high fever for 8 hours, as this kills many of the viruses and bacteria while the entire blood is continously being filtered.
3) Assisting treatments (EUR3500) during the 4 weeks of stem cell treatment and preparing treatments for the bone marrow surgery, such as HBOT, ozone treatments, infrared saunas, atlas chiropractor and more.
4) Accommodation for Hugo and his caretakers (EUR2000)
5) Car Rent (EUR1000) to travel to Germany and drive to the treatments every day
6) Thymus injections (EUR900) as preparation of the treatment to modulate the immune system
7) After care supplement program (EUR1000) for one year
8) Costs for using this platform (EUR1250)