Help Jessie Go to the Emerald City for Surgery

Jessie needs surgery that only the wizards of the Center for Endometriosis Care in the Emerald City (Atlanta) can provide.

I watched my sister start experiencing chronic pelvic pain in the early 2000s, when she was just out of college. It was intermittent at first, but kept getting worse, and within a few years it was no longer going away at all. It was usually still tolerable, but at times it was excruciating. The pain kept spreading too, so that sometimes her entire abdomen was in agony, and she couldn’t do anything but curl up in a fetal position and try to breathe.

Of course she went to doctors. Many doctors. Specialists, even. She dutifully copied stacks of medical records to bring to each new referral, got tests and imaging, followed extremely restrictive diets, tried meditation and CBT and all the other standard advice to manage stress, and got nerve blockers injected. For years, then decades, no one could figure out what was wrong and nothing seemed to help.

Finally, a few months ago, her gynecologist followed up some suspicious ultrasounds with exploratory surgery and found that her entire abdominal cavity, including the pelvic area, was riddled with endometriosis and scar tissue from endometriosis. Jessie had asked multiple doctors about endometriosis as a possible explanation for her pain over the years, and been told it didn’t fit her symptoms. Now it looks almost certain that endometriosis has been the cause of decades of worsening pain. Endometriosis isn’t exactly curable, but surgery can remove most of the lesions, adhesions, and scar tissue that are literally twisting some of Jessie’s internal organs and causing much of her pain.

Because of the extent of scarring and adhesions, she will need to go to a clinic that specializes in this type of surgery, the Center for Endometriosis Care in Atlanta, Georgia. Even with good health insurance coverage, her out-of-pocket costs are estimated to be $10,000 to $21,000, and she will need to pay for airfare and other travel expenses, and will need to take unpaid time off work to recover. As many of you know, her husband Zach is also recovering from a serious injury followed by surgery, and will be trying to work, take care of their two young daughters, do his daily hand rehab exercises, and get the rest he needs for his recovery through all this. I will be with Jessie in Atlanta for the surgery, and accompany her on the flights home, and our sister Nia and her wonderful husband and kids luckily already live close and can help Zach while Jessie is getting her surgery, and help both of them after her return.

We are trying to raise at least $15,000 to cover what is likely to be their minimum expenses for this process, and set Jessie on a path to a new life free of pain, and not weighed down by a new burden of medical debt. I wish anyone in any of our extended families had the money to just cover this level of need, or that medical care was fully paid for by insurance, but as neither is the case, we are putting together this GoFundMe. Please help if you can, and thank you everyone for your well wishes. Jessie is important to me beyond what I can express, and has brought light to so many people’s lives. I’m hopeful that this surgery will make her own life far brighter.