I'm writing this on behalf of one of my longest friends, Meagan, who is one of the strongest people I know. Since 2015, she’s been dealing with severe endometriosis. During that time period, she has seen 25+ doctors in three different states, spent tens of thousands of dollars on medical care and pain management, missed countless days of work, and had two failed surgeries. She has been dismissed repeatedly, with her most recent doctor telling her for the past five years that her pain is not endometriosis related. Recent MRI results with a new surgeon have proven the former doctor wrong.

In 2015, she had her first surgery (an ablation) in which the doctor said all of the endometriosis was gone. She enjoyed 6 months of pain free days until she was suddenly doubled over one day. In 2016, she had another surgery and was, again, told that all of the endometriosis had been removed. After recovering from the surgical pain, she still had some slight hip pain and felt that the surgeon had missed some. Her doctor put her on medication that masks the pain from endometriosis, but does not stop it’s growth. Long term use of the medication eventually caused debilitating back pain and she had to go off of it, which has caused her endometriosis pain to become prominent again. She’s had numerous testing done and was scheduled for surgery in August 2023. After the surgical scheduler yelled at her for having to reschedule surgery due to her catching COVID two days prior to her surgical date and numerous red flags with the doctor’s office, she decided to seek help elsewhere.

At this point, her pain is the worst it has ever been and she’s completely bedridden more days than she's not. The endometriosis keeps her from living and enjoying life and the pain makes it so she in unable to sleep. She can't walk through a grocery store, let alone go out and do things with her 15 year old daughter. She has multiple food intolerances and she is frequently sick after eating. She's finally been seen by one of the top surgeons for endometriosis. They did extensive testing and found out that the endometriosis is so bad that she has deep infiltrating endometriosis covering all of her insides on the left side of her abdominal wall and pelvis. The endometriosis has grown into her organs and internal muscles and is causing many organs to stick to one another. This includes organs in her gastrointestinal system. She also has another painful condition called adenomyosis, which is endometriosis that has grown into the muscle of the uterus and requires a hysterectomy. Due to the complexity of this surgery and that multiple in-network doctors have not been able to get rid of the endometriosis completely, her chances of this being her final surgery are much higher with an out of network surgeon. If she is not able to have this surgery relatively soon, the endometriosis will likely invade her gastrointestinal system even further. In other cases of severe endometriosis, patients have lost a kidney or experienced permanent and irreversible nerve damage.

She needs help. She’s exhausted all possible options for loans for the surgery. After a massive discount from the surgeon, her out of pocket cost for surgery is $19,000. If funds are raised in time, she can have the surgery before Christmas. They will not do the procedures necessary without her having the money up front. If she is unable to raise the full amount, the money will go to help her recoup some of the costs she has had to pay out over the years for pain management (over $300 a month) and time that already has been taken off of work and time that will need to be taken for recovery. So, please, any help at all would be greatly appreciated. I can’t imagine living with that amount of pain for so long. Let's help her have a normal life with her family for the first time in years. Thank you so much from the bottom of our hearts.