Carson's Treatment Bills

Hi everyone. I want to take a few minutes to share what has been going on in my boyfriend Carson's life in the last six months. Six months ago, Carson's health took a sharp downward spiral. The once 100-mile marathon runner,  incredible engineer, avid weight lifter, hiking lover, basketball obsessed, best boyfriend, brother, son, and friend was taken from us. Carson has been in and out of hospitals, countless ambulance trips, numerous emergency room trips, thousands of hours of waiting in hospital rooms, hundreds of testings, hundreds of blood drawings, MRI's, CT scans, countless referrals, and dozens of doctors.  Yet only being told by healthcare professionals that his symptoms are all in his head. I'm sure you're thinking to yourself, "okay, if he's had that much care in 6 months, then he must be fine". No. Carson is currently bedridden. He can not walk, can barely talk, can not feed himself, has immense brain fog to the point where he can hardly remember what his house looks like, daily migraines, sensitivity to light and sound where he has to wear sunglasses/eye-mask and earplugs 24/7, joint pain, muscle-burning, restless legs, chest burning, a sore throat for the past six months, fatigue so incredibly powerful; yet suffering from insomnia, depression, anxiety, PTSD, muscle aching so intense and painful; that the simple task of pulling blankets on top of himself cripples him with pain. Two weeks ago, we finally got answers as to what Carson is suffering from. What Carson is going through is the result of a chronic illness, which is myalgic encephalomyelitis, otherwise known as Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Chronic fatigue syndrome is not taught in medical school, which is why no doctors Carson saw in Lethbridge were able to help him. Chronic fatigue syndrome is a disease that affects 580,000 people in Canada and 1 million people in North America. CFS lasts for about five years in the average person, but it can take as long as 20 years to recover from. That is a quarter of someone's life lost to a disease with no treatment or cure under Alberta Health Care. This horrible disease affects so many people of all ages, yet no doctors know about it unless they specialize in chronic illnesses. In Calgary's entire city, with a population of 1.6 million people, two doctors specialize in CFS and only ONE of the two provides treatment for this disease. Dr. Bruce Hoffman, a functional medicine doctor whose practice is in Calgary, at the Hoffman Centre, is currently providing Carson's treatment. However, Dr. Hoffman's centre is a private clinic, and the cost of treatment is astronomical, to say the least. However, this does not even include the cost of travel, hotel, food, medication, house payments, utilities, insurance, ... the list goes on.  Carson, I, and his family are doing everything we can to help fund his treatment to go back to living a pain-free life, yet we sadly do not have enough to cover everything. Carson, me and his family, ask from the deepest of our hearts, if you can, or want to help him financially, please do. We would not ask for money unless we had to, but we want our Carson back. NO ONE deserves to live with chronic pain, and NO ONE deserves to spend their lives in bed, crippled with pain. NO ONE deserves to miss out on the beauty that is our world, and all the life experiences we get to encounter. Carson and all the other millions of people living with this disease deserve to be treated fairly by the healthcare system and earn a chance to get better. We want to share Carson's story with others to help shed awareness of chronic fatigue syndrome and end the stigma surrounding this disease and hopefully get Carson, and anyone suffering with this disease to get back to regular life. Thank you from our whole hearts.   <3