Hey, Jeremy Price here. As some of you may know, my wife — Chrystal — has been dealing with an autoimmune disease called Granulomatosis with polyangiitis, formerly known as Wegener's, for nearly 16 years. It is a disorder that can cause issues in the nose, sinuses, throat, lungs and kidneys. You can read up on the back story if interested below, but long story short the lungs have become the latest source of difficulty for Chrystal. Starting in May of 2019, she has been to the Cleveland Clinic, about six hours from our home in Bloomington, every six or seven weeks for dilation of the entryway to her left lung. As you can see below with the contrast of the open right lung on the left and restricted left lung on the right, the entryway at the bottom of the trachea is not staying as open as it should and a bacterial infection known as pseudomonas is preventing proper healing. This has also forced Chrystal to cut down her already part-time work hours significantly. Since last May, we have made five trips to Cleveland and are about to make our sixth. How long this will continue to go on we have no way of knowing. At this point, we still have a few thousand in medical bills from last year with a similar amount on the way. In addition, each trip costs a few hundred dollars n additional hotel and travel costs. As much as we would rather not, we are asking for some help in shouldering this unexpected burden. If you can't help financially, your prayers are greatly coveted, and as an added bonus this site will provide a $20 contribution if we get 100 shares on Facebook, so share away!

The journey so far

It all started in February of 2004. We were overjoyed to be pregnant and perplexed by the breathing issues dogging Chrystal. They were almost simultaneous, and one trip to an ear, nose and throat doctor let us know what we were in for. He saw a stenosis (narrowing) in the trachea and even then predicted it was Wegener's Disease (that was before anyone realized Wegener was a Nazi and his named was stricken from the record). It would be six years before he was finally proven right by tests, but in the meantime there were multiple airway dilations, even during pregnancy. About six months after our daughter was born, Chrystal underwent a tracheal resection, where they took out the narrow part of the trachea and sewed it back together. That helped for a while, but it wasn't the cure-all we might have hoped for. More dilations and chronic sinus issues ensued, requiring more surgeries, and eventually Chrystal opted to have her frontal sinuses removed in hopes of limiting infections. It was shortly thereafter that tests revealed indicators that the autoimmune disease was exactly what we suspected. More medicines and treatments followed, eventually getting to a point of “remission,” but even after that she had low immunoglobin levels and signs of occasional inflammation led to more infusions. During this time, more breathing problems began, and the assumption was that it was related to the trachea, but as it turned out, it was a lung issue, which took a couple of years to diagnose. Now we're in the second year of dealing with this issue, with no end is in immediate sight. And there may not ever be a real resolution. Unlike some health issues that have a beginning, middle and end, for better or worse, this disease seems to forever live in the middle for Chrystal.