Campaign Story

Hello, my name is Jodee and my husband’s name is David, and we are trying to raise money to support our financial needs to become a family. With the medical bills that we are still paying with our unsuccessful IVF cycle, the different medical procedures and medications that came with all the medical procedures, we are in need financially. We are living paycheck to paycheck and am doing our best to pay our medical bills as well as our other bills that we have. It has been a long and emotional journey to try and have our dreams come true to have a family.

This is our story, and I hope that you can find it in your hearts to donate and in helping us achieve our dream of being a mother and father.

We defied the odds both medically and through abandonment. Medically for myself, the wife and abandonment for my husband. We both worked hard through those difficult times to be where we are now,’ married for almost 5 years, but still missing an important piece where a child or children can only fill.

Here is my story.
Being the youngest and only girl among 3 children, I have always imagined and dreamed of having a family of my own someday who can be raised with their cousins just like how my brothers and I were raised. My oldest brother has 2 children, 1 boy and 1 girl and my middle brother has 1 boy and at my age, I would have hoped that I would have a child by now after being married for almost 5 years.

In August 2008, I was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer while being the only one who was ever diagnosed with that type of cancer in both sides of my family. I suffered multiple stays in the ICU during my hospital admissions and ended up being comatose where I lost my ability to walk, talk, eat, and drink. While being in a comatose state, I had to wear adult diapers because of my inability to walk and know when I had to go. I also had to have a tube inserted through my nose then through my stomach so I can get medications and nutrients fed to me. There were also numerous visits to get MRIs done because my doctors were worried that I had brain-damage caused by my chemo medications. With the first MRI, my doctors found small masses in my brain in which they could not figure out what they were so they wanted to open my head and “explore” the masses. Fortunately, my mom being a registered nurse at the time declined the suggestions of my doctors and told them to let my body and brain rest while allowing for more MRIs to be done. My body and brain was able to get the rest it needed and I slowly was able to come out my comatose state.

Although, I was able to slowly come out of my comatose state, I still did not have the ability to talk nor walk since I had been bedridden for over a month. As I slowly got “better” I had to go through different tests before I was able to get discharged which was a swallowing test where they had to make sure that I would be able to eat and drink independently, follow finger movements and respond to questions by nodding or shaking my head. In order for me to get home, I had to be driven in an ambulance and my bed was a hospital bed rental. After being discharged, I had to work with both a Physical therapist and an Occupational therapist for me to regain walking, speech, coordination and basically relearn the basics of living independently.

In 2010, I finally started going to school and received 2 AA degrees, one in 2012 and again in 2014 then in 2016 I received a Bachelors degree and recently received my Master’s degree in Applied Behavioral Analysis where I work with people who have been diagnosed with neurological issues such as autism, down syndrome and etc. I have been working in this field for over 5 years and working with children, I feel the need and want to be able to share the love I have with my own child.

It has been 17 years since I went through my medical journey and here I am now, proving that I am meant to make a difference in this world and I believe it is to be a mother.

Now it is my David’s story.
Ever since my husband was little, he never had a father figure due to his father leaving his mom when he was only 2 years old in which meant my husband “had to figure” things out on his own. Being raised by a single mother of already 3 children he did not have a 2 parent household until the age of 9 when his mom married his current step-father. During the early months of their marriage, David started to feel unwelcomed in his own home. His step-father would lock him out of the house when he would come home late after working at the local fast food establishment and not acknowledge/ignore him when he would be in pain after falling down or having any bodily injuries that his step-father would give him. My husband’s life only got harder as was struggling to keep a good GPA and tried to be a good role model to his younger brothers. As he got older his homelife became more difficult because he had to suffer through emotional and physical abuse done by both his mother and step-father, it was not a place of support or any type of living in that household. He was also constantly reminded of his failures and how unhappy he made his parents. Growing up with that kind of experiences, he managed to find multiple jobs in order to move out and support himself to no longer suffer in that kind of lifestyle.

When my husband finally moved out, he not only left the emotional and physical abuse, but he also left his 2 younger siblings to fend for themselves. My husband missed out on experiencing his younger siblings grow up and graduate high school. That really hurt my husband; missing out on their growth and important periods in their lives.

When he was 19 years old, his grandmother on his mom’s side came to visit and he remembers being told “even though you’ve made mistakes, you need to learn from them, but also need to treat yourself with the love and respect that you deserve because one day you will have a family of your own and you do not want to treat them the way that you have been treated.” So from then on, my husband promised that he will treat his future family with the love and respect that he missed out on while growing up. He has kept that promise with me and he hopes and wishes that he can experience giving the love and support to his children.

In 2013, my husband and I met while I was studying and he was working at the local coffee shop. We started dating for 2 months until we became “official” boyfriend and girlfriend. In 2019, 7 years of being together, he finally proposed to me at a Dodgers game during the 7th inning in front of some of my family members who was also there to watch the game. In 2020, during the pandemic, we decided that we wanted to elope where it was just me and him, keeping it very simple and intimate since during that time, we couldn’t invite that many people to begin with. We eloped at the beach where it was only the two of us, the photographer and the person who married us. After the small ceremony, we just had dinner at the local Mexican restaurant and went back home. For our honeymoon, we took a little 3 day road trip to Pismo Beach where we went kayaking and explored the area before going back home since we did not have much time off and couldn’t afford missing that many days off from work.

In 2023, we decided that it was time for us to start trying to have a family. For the first 2 years, we were frustrated to not be able to get pregnant so we looked for a fertility clinic that had good reviews and had a high rate of successful pregnancies. We started off with getting a consultation which had us get blood tests to see if there is anything in our blood that can help determine the cause of not being able to get pregnant. I then had to get multiple of ultrasounds of my stomach, ovaries, fallopian tubes and more blood tests. In our second year, David decided to see an Urologist to see if they can help pinpoint any issues that he may be having during our journey on getting pregnant. While David was seeing a Urologist, I was still seeing my fertility doctor trying to figure out why it has been so hard. We tried naturally for 2 and a half years and losing hope. We tried everything from taking supplements, changing our diets, exercising and going through different procedures such as IVF, micro-TESE and numerous ultrasounds and blood tests with no success. Just this year, my fertility doctor wanted us to try IVF without getting any certainty from David’s Urologist on if David can produce enough sperm or have mature sperm to help fertilize the eggs. With the positiveness from the fertility doctor to get us pregnant we went through the IVF cycle. I went through all of the emotions, pain and struggles that one goes through when going through IVF. I paid over 4,000 dollars in my IVF medications, 137 dollars for every ultrasound and blood tests during the cycle in which was over 5 times and that was all while I was working, not wanting to take any days off so I can pay for all the piling up bills that we were going to have to pay.

Moving to another Urologist, David was then given more tests and was told to try and have a procedure called a micro-TESE in which the doctor would need to perform surgery. The surgery would be performed in the early morning of 6 am, but check-in was at 5 am. The surgery took over 4 hours and on top of that, the specimen that was collected, I had to drive over 1 hour to my fertility clinic for them to check under the microscope and hopefully obtain enough mature sperm to use to fertilize my eggs. After dropping off the specimen, I had to drive back and pick-up David and take care of him by picking up all of his medications for pain and to prevent any infections. I assisted with any other needs he had like helping him walk, cooked him food, prepared all of his medications he needed while I still worked. Two weeks after his surgery, David’s doctor told us that he had single cell only syndrome which makes it impossible to have biological children. After hearing his diagnosis, we again almost lost hope, but something inside of me wanted to do research and look for another fertility clinic to get a second/third. With the last fertility clinic, we were told about embryo adoption. After being told this, it felt like we were given a miracle; a second chance at being parents.

So here we are hoping and wishing for our dreams to come true and with your help, we can have that.