Hi everyone,

This is my best friend Lucy and I’m setting up this fundraiser as she desperately needs urostomy surgery due to her endometriosis, however the wait on the NHS is years and Lucy can’t wait that long. She desperately needs urostomy surgery to improve her quality of life.

Lucy is 27 suffers with severe stage 4 endometriosis and endures unimaginable pain daily.

For those who are unaware, endometriosis is a chronic, life long condition that affects women. It occurs when cells similar to that of the lining of the uterus are found in other areas of the body. These lesions respond to hormonal changes as the uterine lining would and therefore bleed, however that blood is trapped with nowhere to go. This then causes chronic internal bleeding, inflammation and scarring, and also allows the disease to spread through the body. Endometriosis lesions can also produce there own hormones to facilitate their own growth

There is no cure for endometriosis - not even a hysterectomy or the menopause can stop this awful disease spreading. Treatment is also very limited to hormone therapy and surgery.

Lucy was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2018 and since then has endured 11 surgeries due to her endometriosis, including a hysterectomy, and is currently waiting for her 12th surgery.

Although endometriosis is normally associated with the pelvis, Lucy is one of the unfortunate, severe and rare cases where her endometriosis has spread to the inside of her bladder, leaving her dependent on catheter, but it has also spread to her diaphragm and lungs too.

Right now Lucy is in a huge amount of pain daily all over her body, but her bladder is one of her biggest issues as of now. She is reliant an a suprapubic catheter after going into complete retention due to the endometriosis inside her bladder. Every day her bladder spasms, bleeds and on particularly bad days, her body pushes the catheter out of her urethra with the balloon fully inflated. This causes a huge amount of trauma and bleeding and requires Lucy to be blue-lighted to resus on multiple occasions, requiring blood transfusions.

Right now Lucy has no quality of life due to how debilitating her bladder endometriosis is, yet she is still an incredible mum to 3 beautiful children, and is all a NICU nurse. Her current situation means she’s needing multiple trips to A&E a week so she is struggling to balance life as a nurse and a mum, although, as her best friend, I can say she is doing an amazing job given the circumstances.

To improve her quality of life, Lucy need ileal conduit (urostomy) and cystectomy (bladder removal) surgery, but this needs to be done privately due to the urgency of the situation and therefore self-funded but this comes at a huge price.

Any money that is donated to this page will go towards the life-changing surgery Lucy so desperately needs and I know that both her family and I will be grateful for every penny donated towards giving Lucy the quality of life that she so deserves.

Thank you,

Izzie