Donate Towards Casey Joan Kollman's Medical Bills

Hello, my name is Casey Joan Kollman. I'm fundraising money because I am an aspiring performer and college student who was recently hit with a diagnosis of hyperthyroidism. I was rushed to a biopsy to make sure it wasn't thyroid cancer. It currently is not, but the costs of these and other medical complications alone have caused me to have three different collection agencies after me. Your money will go to directly paying off my medical bills, medical credit card debt, and three collection agencies.

Here is my story in fuller detail:

The story starts 6 years ago... as a theatre kid I'm going to be dramatic! I had a very severe panic attack right after my high school's trip to Florida. The way that my body was handling the what was probably heat exhaustion was confusing to me, and I was unable to stay back at the hotel due to being, you know, 16 and on a school trip. I was so disconnected from my body and how it was feeling, and the anxiety was manifesting itself in my body as perceived arm numbness and nightmares about spiders crawling all over me (and I'm not scared of spiders, but these were terrifying dreams). I went to the doctor, and she told me that the severe anxiety could be a result of thyroid problems, which often caused anxiety. After some blood tests, my thyroid hormone levels were seemingly in the normal range and I was suggested a therapist.

After this appointment, I did not begin therapy. I was a minor, and my parents did not put me in one. It wasn't until three years later that I was in college as a sophomore at Lawrence University that I decided that therapy was a good idea. I would bite my nails, shake my legs nonstop, had lots of panic attacks, and basically tried every single thing I could to calm my constant anxiety. My resting heart rate was always around 85bpm, and would regularly climb to the 100s throughout the day. Nothing felt like it was working, even with the therapy I received. I learned so many strategies and all about taking care of my mental health, but breathing and journalling and everything else simply wasn't working to relieve my anxiety. And my premenstrual symptoms were often the absolute worst of it.

I had suspicions that perhaps I had chronic anxiety, ADHD and/or a hormone imbalance, due to the worsening of my symptoms during my menstrual period. In December of 2021, I tried a very small dose of Lexapro for the first time, in an attempt to combat anxiety. It felt like it did absolutely nothing. We upped the dosage a bit and it still felt like nothing. In March of 2022, I asked if perhaps I had ADHD and could try taking medication for that. My family doctor and my therapist agreed that I had many of the symptoms usually associated with ADHD, and we tried Adderall, which was quite expensive. That seemed to help; now I could actually get through my classes without feeling like time was *dripping.* I stayed on Adderall for months, identifying with almost all of ADHD's symptoms but being confused because I never thought I had ADHD as a child. Some people do realize they have it later in life. For me, I felt a sense of identity and calmness with this realization. Maybe ADHD was the answer to the question that was never fully asked!

But as time went on, nothing *really* changed. In the fall of 2022, I was completely and totally overwhelmed with my life. I was taking around 30 academic units, and that was NOT counting ensembles and rehearsals and all the other crazy things I was doing. I signed up for way more than I could handle, and a few of them weren't required of me at all. I was taking Adderall and Lexapro and seeing a therapist, but it just felt like too much. My friendships suffered. My relationships suffered, including my relationship with myself. My core values of creativity, caring, health, achievement and pleasure were all out of balance. Boundary setting was not even something I had the ability to do, let alone seriously consider. I was simply trying to survive.

This continued into the winter of 2023, and I have not had a worst term at Lawrence. This was not the fault of others around me, but the fault of my health and my inability to give myself and others I cared about the proper attention. My body was SCREAMING at me, and I was trying so hard to listen--but at this point I didn't know what it was even saying. I achieved many things in my life during these two terms that I am proud of; but as I said to Ben, it felt like a million babies were screaming at me and I didn't know which one to give attention to first.

Spring break rolls around, and I went to a regular physical with my family doctor. During the appointment, she had me swallow for her, and swallow again. As she did six years ago, she wondered about the health of my thyroid. She could literally feel growth on it that was unattended to. Again, I did blood work. This time, my thyroid hormone levels were WAY too high. I had nodules on my thyroid as a result of my thyroid overproducing T3 & T4 hormones for probably most of my life.

She told me I needed an ultrasound right away, to confirm if I had hyperthyroidism and how it might be caused. And so I went to get my throat scanned in a little room in Appleton at the start of spring term.

The results returned and sure enough, large nodules appeared on my thyroid. In April, my doctor referred me to an endocrinologist and they urged that I get a biopsy right away. They tried to reassure me that thyroid cancer was rare, but I knew the chances weren't zero. I had been able to schedule the biopsy until early June.

And so I waited, and waited... but two months was a very long time to wait and see if I had a life-threatening cancer and allow my thyroid to just keep overproducing hormones and affecting all the cells in my body. My anxiety was terrible, I stopped taking Adderall because I just couldn't handle it and knew that perhaps this was the real issue. I couldn't sit through long concerts without pondering the fact that I could realistically be dead in a month if this was the worst case scenario. So as I was going through the middle of spring term, as May hit, I called around several places to see if I could get a biopsy sooner. Eventually, ThedaCare came through. I got a biopsy in the later half of May on May 17th, 2023, after turning 22 nine days earlier.

Two numbing needles and eight biopsy needles later, the results came back. Benign. Thank god. I had a big bruise on my throat. The endocrinologist and I exhaled sighs of relief, and in late May I was about a month into taking a thyroid-hormone blocker. INSTANTLY, my anxiety evaporated. Gone. Like it was nothing. I'm still not sure I've fully processed the fact that my anxious, potential ADHD self evaporated in that month.

Now, I nave a follow up with blood work in July, and I have to get another ultrasound in a year to make sure that nothing has grown in size. I have hyperthyroidism, which causes sensitivity to heat (like back in Florida all those years ago), tachycardia (fast heart rate), pounding of the heart, nervousness, anxiety, irritability, tremors (you should've seen my hands), sleep problems, and many other complications. It mimics ADHD and many other conditions in a lot of ways, and I'm so glad we caught it when I was 22 instead of later in life.

My resting heart rate is no longer 85, but creeping downwards towards 70 and 68 every day. I have not had a panic attack in two months, which feels like my longest record ever. Heat does not bother me too much. My hands are starting to stabilize.

But now I have over $6,000 total in medical debt.