Minnesota's top trauma hospital fights to stay open amid funding crisis

There seems to be hope in the fight to save Hennepin Healthcare, Minnesota's biggest trauma hospital.

There is bipartisan support to help save the hospital, but the state Senate is proposing less money than the House.

One former patient has something to say to those lawmakers.

The Burley family, of Shakopee, shared many good days before they had a really bad one.

Tanya Burley, mother of two girls, recalls that day in 2020. "I knew exactly I had cancer, I had this weird feeling. [My husband's] mother died of cancer so the cancer word is very scary in our house," she said.

Tanya Burley had triple negative breast cancer. And the chemo - that was supposed to help her - hurt her.

"After the third treatment, my whole face got swollen," she said.

Her husband Bryan said he remembers when he realized it was serious. "They went to move her from St. Francis to United and the first ambulance showed up and said we can't mover her, she's too critical," he recalled.

After weeks of care, they eventually moved her to HCMC. It was her last hope.

She ended up in the renowned burn center.

"[Tanya] had a cardiac team come in because she had cardiomyopathy going on, they had a burn team coming in because her skin was sloughing off skin," Bryan Burley said.

She spent weeks in the hospital.

"I feel like they saved my life, I really do," Tanya Burley said.

She just passed the five year mark: free from cancer, free to live.

Bryan Burley believes that without HCMC, "we'd lose lives."

While the legislature decides what to do, the hospital did get one boost: Hennepin Healthcare has started receiving back payments from the now defunct UCare that will be funneled towards $44 million in care claims that had been in limbo.