Leukemia? Cured! Next Up? A Baby!!!

On October 15, 2015, Paige McCoy was diagnosed with leukemia at only 28 years old.

Their lives changed at that moment.  Let's take a look.

Married April 14, 2012 and having just celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary, Paige and Jeff McCoy have overcome a set of adversities beyond imagination.

Only six months into their marriage, Jeff's lung spontaneously collapsed, hospitalizing him for nearly two weeks and requiring surgery in his chest.

Paige and Jeff attempted to start their family in the subsequent years, but an unknown combination of issues prevented it.  Paige ended up undergoing six fertility procedures including three surgeries for in-vitro fertilization, or IVF.  The IVF processes generated three embryos.

Only a handful of days prior to transferring the embryos to finally become pregnant, excessive fatigue and an outrageously-high heart rate led to a blood test that showed leukemia.  The dream of a pregnancy was put on hold and the embryos frozen.  Paige's life was at stake.

The leukemia was determined to be ALL with an MLL rearrangement, a hostile form of the disease common in children.  It could be cured but only with an aggressive treatment protocol and thousands of prayers.

Over the coming months, Paige would spend 121 days hospitalized at Presbyterian / St. Luke's Medical Center in Denver, Colorado.  She suffered through three months of high-dose chemotherapy and eight sessions of total body radiation.  On January 20, 2016, Paige's bone marrow had been destroyed and all of her white blood cells killed, and she underwent a stem cell transplant from a complete stranger.


The treatments were successful -- there is no sign of cancer anymore!  That came at a cost, however, as the stem cell transplant caused severe reactions.  Paige's weight fell to only 77 pounds, necessitating a feeding tube.  Her skin filled with rashes for months, the steroids caused unnatural bone degradation, and the chemotherapy and radiation eliminated any hope for conceiving or carrying a child.

Now more than 1 1/2 years after the fateful cancer diagnosis, Paige is 95% recovered, and her and Jeff are starting to live an "almost normal" life, dedicating their time to the admirable efforts of anti-leukemia charities.  However, there is one key component missing:  A child of their own.

With Paige unable to carry a child due to the cancer treatment and with three embryos in wait, her and Jeff are in need of a loving and generous woman willing to carry a child on their behalf.  The costs for surrogacy -- to find and support a gestational carrier -- however, are unbelievably daunting.  One of the largest agencies, ConceiveAbilities, states that, Intended Parents should budget for an average cost of surrogacy ranging from $130,000 to $160,000. 

After paying for lung surgery, three IVF surgeries, and curing cancer, that is a price tag that they simply cannot fathom.

Please, out of the goodness of your heart, consider donating to and praying for Paige and Jeff as they take this next step in their lives together.

Leukemia?  CURED!

Next up?  Please help Paige and Jeff achieve their dreams of having a baby.


Read more of Paige's cancer journey at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/paigemccoy