Hi everyone, my name is Kayla Vasquez, and I am from Laredo, Texas. I was diagnosed at age 28 with Ulcerative Colitis which is a form of inflammatory bowel disease 2 weeks after closing on my new house. It all started in early October of 2022 where all of the sudden I started experiencing chronic diarrhea. On October 18; my boyfriend flew from Chicago where he studies medicine to spend his birthday with me in Laredo. During this time, I started experiencing horrible symptoms such as chronic diarrhea, general fatigue, abdominal cramping, weight loss, fever and chronic vomiting. This all lasted for around 4 months back-to-back. The pain never got any better, so my boyfriend decided to take me to one of the local hospitals in Laredo called Laredo Medical Center where we arrived at the Emergency Department. Here I was hydrated with an IV since I was so dehydrated, and I got an emergency blood test done where the ER doctor concluded I had Gastroenteritis which is short term for food poisoning caused by either a virus or a bacterium. I was finally discharged that same day and was told that the symptoms would disappear on their own. Obviously, the symptoms never stopped and only got worse. This led to my boyfriend to look for external help from another physician called Dr. Anthony Galan who took care of me and immediately sent me to get hospitalized at Doctors Hospital. Once, I was finally hospitalized I got a colonoscopy done to check what was happening inside of me. I will never forget that day, after getting the colonoscopy I remember waking up and seeing my boyfriend inside the room and Dr. Galan explaining to me that as it was suspected, I had an autoimmune disease called Ulcerative Colitis. If you are not familiar with autoimmune diseases, these diseases are basically caused by your own immune system in where your immune cells created an immune response to something foreign inside your body but instead of turning off, they continue attacking ultimately causing you great harm. These types of diseases have no cure and can only be controlled with immune suppressors which turn off your immune cells from attacking yourself ultimately leading you to be in remission. In the extreme case of Ulcerative Colitis, my immune system is attacking the inner layer of tissue in my large intestine ultimately creating ulcers which contract without control therefore causing a series of symptoms like the ones mentioned earlier. My journey with Ulcerative Colitis was just starting at this point, for your information in case you were not aware in Laredo, Texas the city where I live there is a huge problem with Tuberculosis. Mycobacterium Tuberculosis thrives in my hometown, so the hospital was not going to start me on immune suppressors without testing me for Tuberculosis which when my test results came back, they came back indeterminate. This was horrible news to my ears since Remicade which is the best medication for ulcerative colitis had to be postponed until doctors in Doctors Hospital were certain that I did not have latent infection of Tuberculosis. This led to my hospitalization to be prolonged from 1 week to 3 weeks where my symptoms never got any better. I was told by the infectious disease doctor that I had to wait approximately 4 weeks to start Remicade and hopefully go into remission from Ulcerative Colitis. After 3 weeks of being hospitalized I was discharged and at this point I knew I had to start Remicade soon. During this time, I was sent back home and was still really weak, the symptoms never stopped and by then I was losing a lot of weight. My weight during this time was 85lbs (normal weight was 120lbs). I was extremely weak, and Dr. Galan was determined to get me Remicade as soon as possible. I was hospitalized again because of my Ulcerative Colitis symptoms flaring up again and at this point I was cleared to start Remicade on January 7, 2023. Due to the new year I had to wait and be hospitalized for another 2 weeks where most of the time I was experiencing severe pain managed by morphine daily and it was horrible, at this point I was working from the hospital and had to constantly be on work meetings and handle the stress of my bosses from my past job. These times in my life were by far some of the toughest ever. After finally getting Remicade, I finally experienced some sort of remission for 2 weeks, Dr. Galan introduced my body to this drug in a small amount to see how my body would take it. When my 2 weeks was almost over, my symptoms started reappearing and at this point I did not think about it twice and immediately went to the ER and was able to get my 2nd infusion of Remicade. During this time, I originally was supposed to get Remicade in a local infusion center but due to my insurance not complying and never accepting my treatment I had no other choice but to be hospitalized for 4 days and get my 2nd Remicade infusion. At this point I was doing much better; I was discharged and sent home. During this time my boyfriend was already back in Chicago finishing up Medical School and I was back home, my house that I had not been able to enjoy in almost 4 months of back and forth fighting with this horrible disease. I kindly asked my company that I was requesting 3 weeks off to recover since I was still in pain and stressed with some fatigue. I was in pain and stressed thinking about how to manage my disease to be able to fully recover. This fight is not over and will never be over, but you can make a huge difference in at least paying off my initial medical debt. I was recently terminated from my job on March 1, 2023 and was left without medical insurance therefore adding a burden on how I will be able to manage my current disease in a future. Never in a thousand years did I imagine getting sick with Ulcerative Colitis after buying a house. Thank you so much for reading my story and THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR DONATION. - KAYLA VASQUEZ