Hi my name is Sara and I am raising money to help with medial and travel expenses for a needed surgery. I have a very complex back, one that most doctors haven’t seen before. Over the course of my life, I have always had back pain, but it was a pain I could live with. Three years ago, the pain started getting worse and the pain moved into my hip. I started going to the chiropractor to see if that would help to alleviate the pain. After a year at the chiropractor, I only received minimal relief. I then decided to go to the doctors to see what was really going on in my back. After almost two years I have seen three surgeons, two orthopedic doctors, countless CT and MRI scans and 3 failed attempts at physical therapy, and feeling very hopeless. Every doctor that I had seen would always say that they had never seen my type of back before and had no suggestions on how to help with my pain. They refused to give me surgery because they didn’t know how to fix it so their only suggestion was medication. So, I tried the pain killers that they suggested. At one point I was on 5 different pain killers and nothing was even touching the pain. The only thing the prescriptions were doing was giving me such brain fog that I couldn’t think or even form proper sentences. And since I homeschool my two children, I couldn’t properly teach them. I decided to stop taking the medication. But my back continued to worsen and I could no longer sit or stand longer than 15 minutes and spent most of my day laying down. My amazing husband who works a full-time job had to also pick up all of what I was doing to help our family. In my desperate attempt to find out how my back could be fixed so I could continue giving my children a proper education I turned to social media. I began searching to find out if others had similar back issues and I came across a group of people from around the world that had the same back anomaly as me. As I read their stories I began to cry, seeing how they found a doctor in New York that specialized in this type of back disorder and how he preformed this specialized surgery that was fixing their back pain. I found out that this back disorder is called Bertolotti’s syndrome. So, I decided to contact the surgeon in NY and set up a virtual appointment with him. On my first appointment with him he said that I had an even more complex back than most, because not only did I have Bertolotti’s syndrome but I have scoliosis and it wasn’t a typical scoliosis, mine actually curved to the left and also that my spinal cord was narrower than most people for my age. He ordered a couple more test and some diagnostic injections to see if he could confirm where my pain was coming from. On top of my back pain, while I was waiting to get those test and injections done, I started having leg pain, it was so bad that I couldn’t even walk and now I was forced to lay down all day. When I had to go in for a scan or injection, which the closes town for us is 45 minutes away, I had to ride in the car laying down. After I finished my scans the NY doctor found out that I also had 4 herniated discs in my back. He then ordered cortisone injections to see if he could figure out where my leg pain was coming from. After two injections he found that the herniated disc in my upper thoracic, T-3 and T-4 was causing my leg pain. Eventually I will probably need surgery in that area as well but I am wanting to keep trying to have the injections as long as possible. Now that we have found that source of my leg pain the NY doctor said he would be willing to do the surgery to fix my Bertolotti’s syndrome. Currently I am working with the insurance to see if they will approve my Bertolotti’s surgery with the NY doctor and to cover him as an in-network doctor. If they will approve him the cost out of our pocket will be less. If they do not approve him the surgery will be about $50,000 along with the addition cost of getting over there. He needs me to be in NY for a total of 9 days so I can complete my pre-op and post-op with him. Over the last two years it has been so hard to have to miss out on so much of my childrens lives that I want to have this surgrery so I can be there for them. Please consider helping because this is a huge cost for our single income family. And if you cannot donate we undersand and still would appreciate your prayers.
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