UPDATE:

To everyone who has responded to and donated, from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I am incredibly humbled at your gift and overwhelmed at the generosity of this community. Thank you again, so much.

Please help support a young female physician who is trying to pursue a lifelong dream but is struggling due to her ex-husband. She has been accepted to an MFM fellowship, has a child with trisomy 18, has been a recipient of a grant over 2 million dollars, and has published in JAMA but is being held back by custody battles with her children.

She lives in Texas and has been at the mercy of an abusive ex-husband and the court to get the legal proceedings completed, but he and his attorney have forced delays that may prevent her from starting the fellowship. Any money will go to help fund evaluation and legal proceedings in hopes to speed things up so she can pursue her dreams. Please help in any way! This family and our country need her! This is what she wrote about her journey:

This is one of the hardest things I have ever had to write. Throughout my life, I have prided myself on being able to provide for myself. Between scholarships and working at restaurants, I graduated with my undergraduate degree without debt. I was awarded the HPSP military scholarship for medical school and graduated without debt from med school. Residency was a 4-year military residency in OBGYN in Ohio.

It was here that life forked. I met my 2 loves. During residency, I not only fell in love with high risk obstetrics and had the immense fortune of finding a mentor who whole-heartedly supported me in research and academics. It was also here that I met and ultimately married my (now ex) husband.

My story probably rings similar to many over-achieving women. Or so I’m told on Instagram. High-achieving woman meets oh so charming man who promises the world to her, and speaks to the insecurity that someone else won’t be able to deal with her/her schedule/her job like he can and she falls. It was not long after the wedding that the façade broke and things weren’t as they seemed. We were 9 weeks pregnant at the wedding and had our 1st child in the last 6 months of my residency. It was about 2 months into the marriage when I asked for marriage counseling the first time.

The marriage continued, along with the emotional, mental, and occasionally physical abuse. Another child was born during my time in the military. It was during my maternity leave with him that I found out the $2M NIH grant I and my co-investigators had applied for was awarded. Over 5 years, we have been able to produce a simulation program to teach providers how to recognize and treat maternal cardiac arrest. It was also during this time that I had applied for MFM fellowship the first time.

Given that we had just been awarded this grant, I pulled my application so I could focus on the grant. The plan was to move to TX to be with the rest of the team, work on the grant, work as an OB hospitalist, and the team I was joining was hoping to establish an MFM fellowship of their own.

Upon moving to TX and starting this new position, I found out the first week of working I was pregnant with our 3rd. I found out several weeks afterward that he had full trisomy 18. And as we sat in the NICU in January of 2020, I watched as Italy, and then later the U.S. shut down due to COVID.

The MFM fellowship through my current program was averted indefinitely. Determined, I still wanted to become one, so applied in 2021. I had been offered multiple interviews, the grant had been progressing really well, and I had begun speaking nationally at different residencies regarding research in trisomy 18.

It was also during this time that my marriage was beginning to fall apart. The abuse was happening on a more frequent scale, and I had to pull out of the match after interviews. I was devastated. I had spoken to an attorney, but shortly thereafter, my son had gotten sick, and I was scared. How would I do this on my own? How would I work, take care of my children, be a nurse to my youngest?

So, I stayed in the marriage. The abuse cycle slowed. I still wanted to be an MFM and applied a 3rd time in 2022. I went through the whole process but wasn’t picked up. I am sure I looked like a flight risk and it wasn’t my time.

Due to continued concerns that were now impacting my children, the marriage formally fell apart at the end of 2022. Had I any knowledge of how nasty it was going to be, I probably would have gotten cold feet again. But it had gotten to the point that figuring out how to work fulltime, be a mom to 3, manage a medically complex child’s care and all the logistics that entails felt like the better choice.

It was hell. But somehow my kids and I made it through it. And then, an opportunity.

The MFM match of 2024 had several programs unfilled. I was in a much better place, my ex husband was working 100% from home (and thus mobile), we were anxiously awaiting news that our RCT was going to be published in JAMA, and it felt like it was finally my time. I applied, and to my great delight and shock, was offered a spot. The program was going to work with me on my complicated logistics and life was good.

Until it wasn’t. My daughter assumed the brunt of the attention I had been receiving. This resulted in a significant shift and increase in her anxiety. Events occurred at Thanksgiving that now instilled fear and further anxiety.

Legal proceedings started, a temporary restraining order was awarded to me and the children, only to be reversed and ultimately removed by another judge 24 hours later. The hearing that was set for 2 weeks after it was initially awarded was moved to the next day, affording the team very few business hours to mobilize any evidence (P.S. This is not typically possible). The restraining order was completely removed, and the hearing 2 weeks to follow was cancelled secondary to my ex’s lawyer’s illness.

It has become painfully clear that given all of these changes of events that starting fellowship in the summer is feeling unfeasible. The financial strain of having to retry large portions of my divorce (ie, custody and geographic restrictions being lifted) in addition to the time required to pursue custody evaluations, multiple court hearings, etc, is not insignificant.

It is painful to ask for help, as it has been my privilege to be the helper in other situations. But has been more painful to be systematically told by a judicial system that what I have experienced and lived is not real. I am sure my purpose on this earth is to raise my beautiful children and to serve the sickest of moms during their pregnancy. Despite everything, I have been able to continue work on Obstetric Life Support (OBLS) grants, did get that publication in JAMA, and have spoken over a dozen times to various institutions and conferences regarding trisomy 18 and communication. I have continued to manage the vast majority of my son’s care and logistics, and continued working fulltime. This fellowship will help me do all of these things better. To have found myself in a position having to defend all of this, to defend myself and advocate for change has felt at times insurmountable in a state already known to de-prioritize women. Any support is appreciated.