Donate to Lavoie's medical and living expenses!

Greetings! We are excited to launch this fundraiser for our dear friend Meghan Lavoie, who is struggling with daily living expenses. Meghan is a fiercely loyal friend and colleague, scientist, climber, chef, and lover of life. Meghan is that go-to friend who always finds solutions and improvements for everyone around her with kindness and encouragement. She has dedicated 7+ years supporting cancer research and has been invaluable to her friends and colleagues at work.

She has had a difficult last couple years, with medical issues requiring multiple surgeries and disrupting her ability to enjoy food, travel, and even work. Her quality of life has been severely impacted by many medical and dental issues and associated recoveries, while also dealing with anxiety and ptsd from childhood traumas. She has been unable to return to work in over 2+ years and needs help urgently to meet daily needs. While she is in the process of applying for disability, she needs help imminently. Thus, we are reaching out to friends and the community to help support her in this time of need. Thank you in advance for considering!

Details:

Meghan has long suffered with dental problems, likely stemming from her early life in Korea battling malnutrition. At this point, many of her teeth have been removed, or are in great danger of breaking. She has to wear dentures to protect her remaining teeth, but this is not a long term solution. She has consulted with many dentists, and has started a dental treatment plan, but is not able to continue until she can secure funds. She needs 2 dental implants imminently in order to stabilize her mouth and be able to eat a normal diet again.

Here is the dental treatment plan that has been started, but is currently on hold until funds can be secured:

2019 brought about more medical issues, with frequent abscesses, including an ER visit for draining a peritonsiluar abscess that was blocking 98% of the airway, with Meghan in-out or consciousness with a fever over 105. Another severe abscess lead to surgery in the summer of 2020.

After this, Meghan started suffering from severe GI issues, leading to weight loss, weakness, and extreme pain. She started consulting with GI doctors to find the cause, only to discover her uterine fibroids have grown substantially over the last 3 years. She was in a lot of pain and discomfort, needing to take days from work when the pain was too much. Along with growing fibroids, she was diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis and a full hysterectomy was recommended.

Uterine fibroids have grown substantially and need to be surgically removed:

After a long journey, Meghan found a highly qualified surgeon and was able to undergo another surgery (the second in 1 year). The uterus, fallopian tubes, 2 large uterine fibroids, and many endometrial implants, including an extensive endometrial implant on the bowel, were successfully removed.

To date, Meghan has incurred many medical bills from 2 surgeries related to uterine fibroids and endometriosis, and hopes to start the dental treatment plan above in order to re-gain her fully functional life. While she has been chipping away at the bills, the amount remaining is insurmountable and has not allowed her to address any of her ongoing dental issues.

In addition, Meghan has been dealing with the emotional sides to her physical recovery, and along the way has surfaced anxiety and ptsd stemming back to her childhood and adoption as well as her many medical emergencies. At times her emotional labor has been extensive to not allow her to find stable income. Please consider giving any amount to support Meghan to continue her journey of physical and emotional healing.