From August of 2023, I have been having some pretty severe health issues that everyone I went to doctor-wise just pushed off. I was bleeding erratically. This type of bleeding, my doctors did eventually tell me, was me hemorrhaging out. Not your normal bleeding as a woman but severe enough that I would call out of work because of the pain and stuff. No doctors would really take me seriously because I did not have health coverage.

In December of 2023, I became awfully sick, discolored, and all around ill. I pushed this off as an 'oh, my body just can’t handle the weather.' Plenty of my coworkers and friends urged me to go to a doctor or something. Even though I had tried for over two years to be seen, I still had no answers without having to pay several hundreds of dollars.

By May of 2024, I finally went to the health department to see if they could help me. I explained everything I’ve recently had happening, and this sweet woman took my hemoglobin level from my finger and immediately told me to rush to the ER. My blood levels were so low that someone older than me would have been considered dead. By the time I got to Live Oak ER, my levels dropped even more that the doctors would not let me leave unless I had someone to drive me to Gainesville hospital. From 10 am to 3 pm, my blood levels went from a 4.6 to a 3.0. Normal levels are at an 11-15. I was admitted to the hospital for 5 days where I received 3 blood transfusions and 6 iron infusions. They diagnosed me with fibroid tumors in the uterus. Not just 1-5 of those but upwards of 15. These fibroids grow with blood supply and will explode just to regrow. The pain levels are in the 8-10 level range. They gave me something to help, but a month later, I was back for another 5-day stay because my blood levels dropped again. I was put on medication that would last me only 2 years. But luck would have it that at the year mark, insurance would cut me off from the medication. My options were a hysterectomy at age 22 or hope this medication works well enough to get me an appointment with better doctors and get another opinion.

I met Colby in November of 2023, and he urged me to move to Alabama and see what the doctors could do for me here. So I moved to Alabama in 2024 and have finally, after a year and a half, got a chance to see a doctor at UAB. They have since given me injections of Lupron to slow the growth and prepare for surgery. I’ll be receiving two surgeries at once. One is laparoscopic and the other is robotic. These will clear out the fibroids for 3-7 years and allow me and Colby to have children of our own and establish a family before getting rid of all reproductive organs. The only issue now is the cost of said surgery. The cost is around $10,000. Unfortunately, we do not have that saved up, and the fibroids are basically ticking time bombs. Without surgery, I end up going off all medication because it only works for 1 year, and I am back at square one. The point of me explaining this is to ask for some help. If you know me, you know I am a figure-it-out-myself kind of person. But there comes a time where everything becomes too much, and you need to reach out, so this is me reaching out for some help.

One thing I’ve always wanted was to build a family. I’ve got an amazing husband and the sweetest stepson ever. This surgery gives me the ability to have more children on my own and build a family.