Life After Cancer: Building Our Family Through IVF

Hello, friends! We are Justin and Edmarie, and we are asking for your assistance to help support our dream of bringing a new life into the world. I (Justin) was diagnosed with VonHippel Lindau syndrome when I was 9. This disorder has caused my body to grow numerous tumors in my brain, eyes, spine/spinal chord, kidneys, and adrenal glands - in addition to a wide variety of other things and side effects. The classical treatment for VHL is surgical - doctors wait until the tumors are large and scary enough to spread, and then remove them. This has lead to a seemingly endless amount of life threatening surgeries with life altering and disabling side effects - I have had to re-teach myself how to walk more times than I prefer to count. I've lost most of the feeling and coordination in my limbs, have extreme nerve pain throughout my body, and these surgeries led to a lifelong prescription, and eventually addiction, to pain medication. I'll be entirely honest, things were looking really bad for me five years ago. The accumulated years of medical problems and medication use were becoming unbearable. Then, a miracle happened - my doctors suggested a stage 1 drug trial for an experimental chemotherapy. The side effects and the evaluation regimen were intense (I was flying from Seattle to DC every two weeks), but what did I have to lose? This medication saved my life. For 24 years, every single doctor's appointment would end one of two ways: 1), "your tumors haven't grown enough to be scary enough to immediately worry about" or "the tumors are becoming large enough to spread, we have to operate." This medication added a third, "your tumors have shrunk." Up until that point, never in my life had I received good news. This daily chemo, Welireg, almost immediately changed my life. Eventually, I was able to fulfill my life long dream of taking a trip to Taiwan. There, I met my future wife and we fell in love. All of a sudden, an entire future of possibilities were opened to us, and we discovered a new dream that would have been impossible for me in the past: we want to bring a child into our family. Unfortunately, after decades of the heavy use of prescribed opiate, I have become infertile. We discussed the situation with my doctors and they suggested IVF. The costs are immense (see below), and not even reduced by my disability nor Edmarie's medical insurance.  

My wife has been working overseas since she was 23 to help out her family and siblings, helping them to attend school. It was 2020 when I met her in Taiwan for the first time where she works at that time. Throughout the covid pandemic, we kept in contact. Two years later we made the decision and petitioned her to come to America and get married in March of 2022.

My wife has always wanted to have children of her own.Given her age and my health issues, IVF seems to be the best option for us. That is why my wife and I decided to seek your help in making our dreams of having children come true.

From the bottom of our hearts,

Thank you so much for all your kind help.

Seattle reproductive medicine IVF Total : $18,315.00 

Aesthesia, retrieval of oocytes, sperm wash, fertilization, embryo culture, biopsy, testing fees, and cryopreservation.

 

$4,578.75 Discount applied to cycle for: 25% SHARED HOPE/LIVESTRONG

Remaining TOTAL : $13,736.25

Links to read more about me:

Published story about Justin #1

Published story about Justin #2

Patient Worthy’s podcast with Justin on it.