Funding for Jason Baumer

Our buddy Jason could use some birthday cheer this year as he is spending some time in the hospital and possibly facing surgery. Critter and J currently don't have health insurance and any gift that we could give would go a long way to helping them out. The process for donating is pretty easy, but if there are any questions, feel free to contact me on Facebook.

Please keep Jason and Critter in your thoughts and prayers.

Best Regards,

Mike

P.S. Message from colleague Dan Jones below:

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Hi all,

I just spoke to Jason Baumer. Not sure what you guys have heard recently so here's the latest: He has an infected bowel that has ruptured in a few places.

He sounds good. He's not out of the woods yet, but he has been improving the last couple days. If he continues to get better he will not need surgery. His condition will be with him his entire life though, so he may need surgery one day in the future. He started feeling ill on Thursday and it got so bad on Friday morning that he cancelled class. It got progressively worse and by Friday afternoon Chrystal (sp?) took him to St. Elizabeth's where he was admitted. They sent him by ambulance to St. Elizabeth East, where he's been since. He ALMOST had emergency surgery, which was when he was at his worst on Saturday. He's been on catheters of saline and amino acids up until today when he got his first nutritional I.V. Their treating his infections with antibiotics and draining the infections as much as possible. They're hoping they can counter the infections and let his body heal itself as much as possible. He's hoping he'll be released from the hospital by his birthday (which is next week), but is trying not to get his hopes up because everything is still up in the air. His chances are good though that he will get released soon.

As we suspected, neither he nor Chrystal have health insurance. He says he's trying not to think about it, but maybe we could do some more checking for him. I definitely want to raise some money for him. There are some programs that could maybe help him with most or even all of his medical expenses, but even still he's going to have expenses at home that he'll need help with.

He says he's fine with us telling people about his situation although we may want to clean up some of the specifics for those who might be squeamish. He also said he'd love to have visitors and he has his cell phone if anyone wants to call him. He only asks that visitors give him a heads up before they come because he never knows when the doctors and nurses are going to barge in with a million and one tests or check ups.

Jason's his usual jovial self. He's already talking about sending a thank you card to the department for the flowers and getting back to work, but he's also realistic about needing to take it easy for awhile.

Please keep him in your prayers and let me know if you have any suggestions about helping him and Chrystal out. I'm hitting family up for donations this weekend. Maybe someone could ask Francis Cordova if she wants to share some of her departing money.

~Dan