Kaitlynn's Cancer Recovery

Hello,

My name is Betty Coffman and I am Kaitlynn Humphrey's mom. I am asking for donations to help support my beautiful daughter during her recovery from uterine cancer surgery. She is 28 years old and has been unable to work because of the severe bleeding and horrific pain.

Her surgery is scheduled for this Thursday 9/24/21. She is having a complete hysterectomy - at 28 years old. She has no children. The minimum recovery time for this surgery will be 6 weeks. Facing another six weeks without a paycheck will be absolutely devastating. She doesn't have any emergency resources left. They are all exhausted.

I know that things are tight everywhere, but I am reaching out in faith that God will use this platform to help and provide for my daughter. If you are unable to give, that's okay. Thank you for reading her story. Thank you for caring. And thank you for your prayers. If you are able to give - I thank you and I pray that your giving will be rewarded. Here's Kaitlynn's experience.

In May this year she started having extreme pressure in her pelvic region. Her cycles were abnormally heavy and came with debilitating pain. She went to the emergency room where the doctors did an internal ultrasound which showed an enlarged endometrial stripe. This is abnormal and so she was sent to the gynecologist for a consultation and possibly more scans. The doctor there looked at her labs and her scans and decided that the thickened endometrial lining was most likely caused by too much estrogen. And so she was given a synthetic hormone to balance out the estrogen.

Weeks passed until her follow-up appointment at the gynecologist. More internal ultrasound scans were taken which showed that the lining had not gotten thinner - it was still thickening. So, he scheduled her for a D and C including a biopsy. By this point in time she had taken all of the hormone pills. Shortly after this appointment she began to bleed so heavily we thought she was getting ready to hemorrhage. She was in so much pain she couldn't stand or walk. She could barely sit. Her surgery date was still a month in the future. She was taken by rescue squad to the hospital one time - they treated her pain but did nothing to move her surgery up.

A few days later she began vomiting and once again started to bleed so heavily that her bathroom looked like a crime scene. Again, she was back at the emergency department. They repeated scans to make sure her ovary hadn't torqued because of her excessive pain level. Thank God it had not. They recommended that her doctor move up the surgery. He did NOT move up the surgery.

We were told that unless she went to the emergency room and the ER doctors were convinced she would die - the surgery would NOT be moved up. After a week of me constantly calling them and advocating for her they FINALLY agreed to move the surgery date 10 days earlier than the original date. It was with a different surgeon but she was suffering so badly at that point, it just didn't matter.

This appointment was still weeks away. She suffered so badly she became severely anemic. By the time her surgery date came, the surgeon was only able to take biopsies of the lining because he feared she would bleed to death on the operating table. A few days later those biopsies came back. Type 2 uterine cancer at 28 years old.

She was then referred to UVA and was scheduled for her hysterectomy. Two weeks before her surgery was scheduled she got very ill. She ended up back at the hospital, this time with pneumonia. Thank God it wasn't COVID. She is currently feeling much better Praise Jesus - but, of course her surgery was pushed out to September 23rd. We are praying for complete healing for my child and a smooth recovery from her surgery.

If you have read to this point, thank you. And please PLEASE PLEASE tell the young women in your life this story! Please don't let them fall victim to outdated medical protocols which make testing for cancer in young women so illusive.

Because endometrial cancer DOES HAPPEN to premenopausal women. If they had biopsied her at the onset of her symptoms most of her suffering could have been avoided. But they didn't. They didn't because too many old men in lab coats say young women just don't get uterine cancer.

But what about the ones that do? That's my child. My heart. My joy. And as a mom I am absolutely livid at the medical community for not speaking up and demanding more testing. I pray that whoever reads this will be blessed. And if you feel led to lend support to my daughter in this scary and difficult time I just want to thank you with all of my heart.