Help Support Caity in Paying for her Rare Tumor Surgery Hello, my name is Caity. I live in beautiful Battle Ground, Washington along the border of Oregon with my wonderful husband Tyler and my Italian Greyhound Luna and our cat Finn. I met my husband 9 years ago and we have been married for 4 years. About a month ago I started having shortness of breath, and after about 10 days I told my husband I finally needed to go to the urgent care. While there, tests came back with the signs of a pulmonary embolism, which meant I needed to go to the ER to get a CT scan to check. Obtaining the CT was extremely difficult, because laying flat caused me to feel an intense pressure as if I were drowning. Once they got the CT, they found that my shortness of breath was caused by a mass. My second day in the hospital they performed a CT guided biopsy and had to wait several days for the results. Due to some new nation wide laws that were put into place, the results are automatically released to the patients. I'm very much an advocate of getting your records and having easy access to them, but I am not an advocate of blindly releasing these records and not helping your patient understand the results and having to turn to Google searches. I was told that I had to wait until my follow up appointment with my primary doctor, which was 5 days away. I was hoping that I would get it figured out. When my appointment arrived, I was told that they sent a referral to the Oncology department at Legacy Hospital and they were waiting to hear back. After the weekend I reached back out and was told that because I didn't have health insurance, that Legacy Hospital wouldn't help me and that the only way that I could get that appointment, would be to apply for their financial aid which had a 2-3 week turn around, all while assuming the worst about having a cancer diagnosis. I was finally able to get in touch with OHSU's (Oregon Health and Science University) Cardio-Thoracic Surgery department who were able to help me understand my results and schedule me for surgery. They determed that I have a Thymoma, which (as long as its treated) is non-cancerous and I have a very good prognosis. However, I need a major surgery to excise the mass and I unfortunately have no health insurance. I've applied for everyones financial aid, and have been told at every stop that I make more than their limit for financial aid, except that I don't have the extra funds at the end of the day to pay for the health insurance. I had to wait for my estimate. I received my estimate and was told that since I didn't have insurance, that I would have to pay 50% down prior to my surgery, which is $25,626.04 to get my surgery. They will accept payments after that. This estimate is including 1-2 days in the hospital, but could go up from there, depending on how I'm doing. Here is the breakdown of my current medical hardships: Surgery: $52,272.08 Hospital Stay @ Peace Health: $29,453.59 Urgent Care / Primary Care Follow Up: $2,178.40 __________________________________________________ = $82,903.99 We have a lot of emotional support, but financial and physical help is limited. Our family is spread out and unable to physically help us due to COVID concerns with flying into the area, and potentially transferring that prior to or during my recovery. I will be applying for Washington Paid Family Medical Leave Act, which will allow me time off to recover and pay about 60% of my paycheck. I'll be off for around 6-8 weeks. Since we won't have the physical help, my husband will also be taking this time off to help care for me during my recovery. He will also have to take on the responsibilities of my care and care of the entire household. I will also be unable to drive or ride in the front seat of the car for 6-8 weeks due to the surgery including cutting my breast bone and it would be life threatening if we were in an accident and the air-bag went off. With the loss of income and the current bills and the estimate for the surgery/hospital stay (with the possibility of increase) and the loss of some of our income, we are in need of right around $100,000.
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