Support Jessica's Medical Battle.

Dear friends, family, colleagues, and wonderful compassionate souls in our community,

I am putting this fundraiser together in the hopes of supporting one of the toughest women I have ever met. She is an amazing mother to 4 children under 12 and I am blown away every day with what she must live through to still make it happen for her family. She is very strong, but even the strongest of us come to a point where we need help.

Jessica Darrouzet’s Story:

Jessica first became sick in November 2019 after getting her tonsils and adenoids removed, 6 weeks after she ran the Chicago Marathon. Three days after surgery she came down with a stomach bug that has never gone away. Little did we know this was the beginning of a very long road.

It took doctors almost a year to get to a Behcet's diagnosis - it’s an auto inflammatory disease that for Jessica is like having Crohn’s and lupus at the same time. It causes ulcers in her stomach and small intestine among many other systemic symptoms.

Behcet's caused what we thought was severe gastroparesis - literally stomach paralysis meaning the nerves in her stomach don't function properly to move food from stomach to intestines. It caused her severe nausea and vomiting and within 6 months of being diagnosed she was so malnourished, she had to have 2 feeding tubes placed - a g-tube in her stomach for venting and draining and a J-tube in the jejunum portion of her small intestine where her feeds and meds go. This bypasses her stomach, but she still needs constant antinausea medication. She was unable to eat anything or even drink water for 8 months but has slowly worked up to being able to eat about 50% of her calories and the other 50% come from her specialized formula. But she still throws up constantly.

In actuality her entire digestive tract is affected, and she has a form of dysautonomia called autoimmune gastrointestinal dysmotility (AGID). Her small and large intestine are more affected than her stomach.

Less than 1000 people in the US have this disease.

She started immunotherapy in April to treat her AGID and it has helped her nausea and vomiting somewhat.

In March she was also supposed to start a form of chemo called rituxan, her specialists all agreed. But her GI at the time made it very difficult, even though she agreed to the IVIG/ rituxan combo (to attack both her Behcet's and AGID at the same time) and after 4 months gave up on it. She switched to a new GI who is a motility specialist who she had waited a year for an appointment with, but he has never prescribed rituxan and didn't want to even though he thought it was a good idea.

Her case was discussed in a panel of the UTSW GI department, and they decided none of them could treat her because they didn’t know how and her rheumatologist would have to prescribe the rituxan, though they thought it was a good idea. Then her rheumatologist wasn't sure it was a good idea but had no other ideas.

All her specialists at UTSW have said they don't know how to treat her because she is so complex, and she needs to go to Mayo in Rochester Minnesota. They are the only one researching her motility disease.

In the last almost 4 years she has been admitted to the hospital 19 times for a total of 115 days. 21 days just in the last 6 months.

Please help donate and share. Before Jessica became ill, she was very active, full of joy, a marathoner, and looking forward to starting at her new job. The last 4 years have been a hellish uphill battle to find answers and during this time the financial burden has only grown. She needs these funds to help pursue going to the Mayo research hospital as well as help get a handle on current bills.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for taking the time to read this and share this.

Sincerely,

Ammie G.

(Jessica’s Sister in Law)