My name is Tamsen & Dave is my father. He is the kindest person with the best attitude of anyone I’ve met in my entire life and has never let his illnesses keep him from living life to the fullest and has never defined himself by his disabilities. Dave was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when he was one year old and has lived as a childhood diabetic since the 1960’s. In 1993 he was on dialysis and he had a 5-bypass heart surgery and his second kidney transplant. He has been living with that same kidney since July 1993 and it is starting to reject now in 2024. Dave has worked at Harmons Grocery since after High School and they have been amazing with providing time off and accommodating the health issues he has. Unfortunately, he does not have enough sick time or PTO to cover the next few months of time off for recovery until long-term disability kicks in. My father was admitted to the University of Utah Emergency Room on July 9 and had an emergency toe amputation and bypass done to try to save the rest of his diabetic foot. The surgery was extremely hard on his transplanted kidney and his heart. He is already in kidney failure & congenital heart failure and the surgery was too much stress on both. He started dialysis on Thursday, July 15 and we are hoping this alleviates some of the stress from his body and his own kidney is able to take back over the work soon, but it could be a permanent addition or he may need a third kidney transplant if the kidney is too compromised. While David is recovering from the amputation and this long ICU visit he will not be able to return to work. We have started the application for long-term disability that will not kick in until October at the soonest and we have some normal life expenses to cover for him in the meantime. Luckily, Dave hit his insurance deductible earlier this year after a heart surgery in January and catching COVID in March so we do not have any medical expenses to worry about for the time being. When he began dialysis I started the paperwork for long-term disability and realized how much of my focus has been going towards the financial and logical stress of this rather than focusing on my father and his healing. While we don’t want to air our own issues on the internet I realized I could use some support from my community at this time. My family would appreciate any financial support you can give while we focus on spending quality time with him and he focuses on healing. Any donations made will cover normal living expenses like housing costs, insurance, and other recurring expenses. Any donations beyond our goal will be saved for future time off needs and quality of life improvements for Dave.
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