Hi, my name is Ryan and I am organizing a fundraiser on behalf of my sister Nikki.

Here is her story:

"Growing up I struggled with a lot of gastrointestinal issues, but they were always brushed off by doctors as anxiety. In high school I always had a pocket full of meds like gravol, tums and pepto because I thought everyone felt sick after eating as that was my normal. In college, I thought I had food intolerances and tried more holistic methods of treating my nausea and pain. My health became drastically worse about 3 years ago. Eating became very difficult as I would become violently ill after meals, and struggled with getting my symptoms under control. I was losing a lot of weight, eating caused me severe pain, I had severe nausea, I got full really quickly and stayed overly full for hours on end. It got to a point where my weight was in a dangerous place, and I no longer tolerated solid foods. My medical team struggled to believe that my symptoms were real, until my testing revealed a very rare condition called Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome. This is when the third portion of the duodenum is pinched by the superior mesenteric artery and aorta, this makes it difficult for food to pass through the intestine. Even after this was revealed on testing, doctors struggled to believe that this was the cause of my symptoms and tried to dismiss it as functional dyspepsia or an eating disorder. I fought the medical system for over a year, and was surviving on a spoonful of peanut butter and frosting for caloric intake. After a lot of persistence, my medical team finally had a feeding tube placed. After the feeding tube was placed, I was able to gain back the weight I lost, but still battled with my medical team to determine what caused me to lose my ability to eat. I still struggled with severe pain, and my quality of life continued to dwindle, causing me to lose all oral intake. This left me on a feeding tube and picc line for nutrition and hydration.

In Manitoba, we don’t have the specialists needed to look into these rare vascular compressions. Since we were unable to get answers in Manitoba, and seeing someone out of province was out of reach, my husband and I travelled abroad to Spain to see a vascular surgeon that specializes in Abdominal Vascular Compression Syndromes. After further testing it was confirmed that I have Superior Mesenteric Artery Syndrome (SMAS), Median Arcuate Ligament Syndrome (MALS), Nutcracker Syndrome (NCS) and May Thurner Syndrome (MTS). It has been a huge relief to finally have a diagnosis of these conditions, but now I need to get them treated.

In Manitoba, there are no surgeons available to treat these vascular compressions, and I kept being brushed aside by the surgeons we do have. This forced me to again seek an opinion outside of Canada, and we found a surgeon in Virginia who is highly trained in surgery for SMAS and MALS. The type of surgery being done to treat SMAS is not available anywhere in Canada, and the procedures that can be done to treat the condition in Canada, do not have a high success rate and will not resolve SMAS completely. This is why I need to get surgery in the US, and even though this treatment is not available in Canada, the Canadian government refuses to assist in paying for the procedure. The cost of the surgery, travel, stay and medical expenses is high with not having American insurance, so we need to raise upwards of $60,000 to cover these costs. This surgery will hopefully allow me to regain my ability to eat orally, and improve my quality of life by releasing the pain caused by these compressions. After treating SMAS and MALS we will re-evaluate our options for treating Nutcracker Syndrome and May Thurner Syndrome, as those will need to be surgically treated in the future."

She will be getting surgery in January, and will need to cover the costs upfront before surgery as per the hospital's instructions.

Please consider donating to help her cover the costs of this surgery and help her regain her ability to eat.

*The beneficiary is Nikki’s husband Matt, all funds are going towards Nikki’s surgery, Matt is standing in to manage this for her. *