Laser... Do I have your attention?

I am fundraising on behalf of my remarkable niece, Audrey. Audrey has spent over half of her life identifying and overcoming numerous autoimmune diseases. She has discovered treatment that works but is not covered by insurance. The funds requested are to pay for the equipment needed for her treatment. Audrey is 19 years old. She is currently studying to become an Occupational Therapist and forming a non-profit to continue helping others with the treatments she has found. I am amazed by her strength, positivity and ability to maintain her witty sense of humor while dealing with this painful struggle. Please read, DONATE and share her story.

In Audrey's words...

Hello, the following is my story. I want to thank anyone who has the time to read it, share it, or make a donation! Over the last 7 years, I have been diagnosed with multiple chronic conditions (including Hashimoto’s, Celiac’s, Reynaud’s and chronic fatigue syndromes, papilledema and nervous system dysfunction in the form of dysautonomia). Few medications have helped any of these, and by the time I was 16, my doctors began suspecting other conditions such as brain autoimmunity and narcolepsy. Neurological symptoms such as chronic migraines, tremors, temporary vision loss, poor memory and coordination began to build until my cognitive state was frightening. I began getting lost even in familiar places; I felt confused about where I was at the grocery store and eventually in my own home. I had difficulty reading analog clocks and telling my left from my right. I tried to learn how to drive, but when I practiced, I didn’t have fast enough reflexes to do so safely. Other times I would experience what I was later informed might have been focal seizures, during which I would pull into the wrong lane of traffic and as I saw oncoming cars I would become confused and freeze—not sure how to fix my mistake. In July of 2020, when I was 16, I traveled to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, all the way from a small town half an hour outside Dallas, Texas. I spent a week seeing a team of different specialists and having more and more tests run. Some of the above diagnoses were discovered there, but in terms of treatment, all I was offered was symptom management in the form of a potential cocktail of medications. When I asked for treatment of the root cause rather than symptoms or investigation into a unifying diagnosis to figure out why all of these things were going wrong with me. I was told by the Mayo Clinic that ‘science has its limitations. Upon returning from the Mayo Clinic, I began treatments that, while approved by the FDA, are not covered by insurance. The first was neurofeedback, which helped my sleep and energy, coordination, and eventually memory. So many years of my life up until that point were blurry or had parts missing but I began getting memories back and remembering them with greater clarity. For a long time, I had been too sick to get a job and my memory was so bad that I couldn’t even remember short sequences of numbers. But after I got my first job as a hostess at a restaurant and had begun this treatment, I remember being so excited when people would give their phone numbers over voicemail and I wouldn’t have to repeat the recording several times to remember all of the numbers long enough to write them down. Even still, I still had much progress to make, and my thyroid (TPO) auto-antibodies, which are a result of Hashimoto’s disease, were still measuring at over 13,000 iU/mL. (The condition is diagnosed at around 60 iU/mL depending on the lab and healthy people with functioning thyroids should have <10 iU/mL so this measurement is literally off the charts-- 13,000 is where they stop counting.) I began high intensity laser therapy, or photobiomodulation therapy, in April of 2021 primarily to address this issue and many of my symptoms began abating. After this treatment, my routine testing found that my thyroid was in a functioning state, the nodules on my thyroid had shrunk, and my TPO antibodies were 279 iU/mL. Although this was still fairly elevated, I was grateful to have found the first treatment that has ever improved these labs. Hashimoto’s is a fairly common condition, but the treatment consists solely of medication to supplement the chemicals your thyroid is unable to produce— nothing is done to prevent the immune system from continuing to attack the thyroid, or to prevent the attack from spreading to other places in the body.

To provide the consistency I need from photobiomodulation therapy, I have set my fundraising goal to $50,000. Any contribution and sharing of my story would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much!