Campaign Story

Hey there! Thanks for taking the time to stop in!

After suffering loss, beginning the process to adopt, surgery, trying all other avenues of treatment, traveling the country, and investing thousands of dollars into trying to grow our family, we literally have a 0% chance of ever conceiving again, without the assistance of a skilled surgeon.

The surgery will allow us a chance, potentially as great as 60% odds, of having normal fertility restored and being able to conceive however many children the Lord intends for us, naturally. With our dreams of having a large family-surgery and natural/medication assisted conception are our most feasible options.

Financially we are extremely blessed to have a roof over our heads, fulfilling jobs, and wonderful health insurance-but unfortunately the state of Kansas does not require fertility coverage.

Therefore all of these expenses have been paid out of our pocket over the past 6 years of our marriage and we have happily sacrificed luxuries, upgrades, travels, and other wants for our biggest desire-a family. Unfortunately, this time, those sacrifices just will not be enough.

After almost 12 years of life together and 6 years of marriage/trying to grow our family, we are beyond anxious to have a fighting chance at conceiving and doing so quickly.

As much as we hate the thought of even sharing this all, we are placing our faith in God that He is working miracles through others, by humbling us to our knees.

We are also on a short timeline to have this surgery locally before the surgeon retires again and the cost triples with having to travel. That is a story in itself that we may someday share and laugh at in retrospect.

With this in mind, we are humbly asking for support in the form of prayers, donations, your presence at a fundraiser, or to simply press the share button-in the hopes our story reaches far and wide to make our dreams of parenthood possible- but to also share awareness regarding infertility and the lack of support and coverage to get to the root cause and correct it. If anything comes of sharing our story- let it be advocacy for removing barriers to true infertility care and coverage!

We are firmly requesting privacy during this process, as we do our best to maintain the intimacy that having children should entail. Yes this includes with our immediate family! So please no questions or requests for more details at this time, in order to respect our boundaries and protect our mental health.

I pray that one day the grief, hardships, and lack of care from the medical system we have endured over the past 6 years, will be something I put to paper in the form of a book, for those who wish to have a more intimate understanding of infertility. But for now, we wish to keep our hearts, and the dark, deep, and ugly of this journey protected.

What we WILL share regarding specifics: we have a form of infertility that affects as few as 1-5% of couples. And based on our unique situation we are the literal 1% statistic and have no cause. So trust me when I say, we feel incredibly blessed that we have aligned with a physician who feels confident enough to give us hope, and even has had past success with the exact procedure.

There is no guarantee that this will work and we may not even know for a year whether it will! So, as much as I would like to guarantee an outcome to your prayers and generosity- I simply do not have that ability.

But if it is not the Lord’s will, we will take time to grieve this step we feel we need to take and make a decision with how to move forward. We pray that someday that will include adopting in addition to our biological kiddos from a place of joy- not a place of grief, lack of options, or as compensation (like is frequently offered with infertility).

We are attempting to raise funds to cover any portion of the cash responsibility of the surgery ($7,000), due prior to scheduling, so that we may continue to pay bills and make up for time lost-taking off of work from our income.

On top of that there will be continued imaging, labs, testing, and the fertility clinic for both of us throughout the year following-that are not covered by insurance.

We remain hopeful that our story may be redeemed in a new way that we are now starting to allow ourselves to picture. While things may take more time (story of our relationship), we remain optimistic that as soon as 10 months after, we may be holding a newborn baby earth side-just ahead of our 7th wedding anniversary. We want to ensure we do not put ourselves in a situation where we feel we cannot responsibly care for that child.

We may also be faced with the need for an additional surgery prior to conceiving, to excise endometriosis correctly, if the disease has infiltrated too deeply. This procedure to correctly treat disease, requires traveling out of state, is also not covered by insurance, and is thousands of dollars out of pocket.

All of this to say, we are so grateful for all of those who have supported us from near and far- while we battled something in privacy that is nearly impossible to understand without having lived it. Your unwavering grace, love, and patience with us when we simply could not be present or share what was going on, does not go unnoticed.

If you do not quite understand the depths of what has been part of our story for over half a decade now, hopefully this quote from University of Utah Health shift the perspective, “The stress level for infertility is comparable to the stress level of being diagnosed with cancer.”

Unable to give? We beg you to Contact your local church, community, and your employer and request coverage of fertility care/education and support/outreach for couples.

Advocate to insurance and lawmakers for coverage of excision surgery for endometriosis. This disease is so common and miss/under-diagnosed because of lack of access to care!

Prefer Venmo? @magsgalliher

Prefer to volunteer or donate items to help fundraise? Reach out via social, text, or call.

Prefer to cook a delicious gluten free meal? We would be so grateful♥️I will organize a meal train as soon as surgery is scheduled, to be dropped off at my sister’s to maintain our privacy while healing.

Prefer to lift us up through prayer? I will update my Facebook to share a Novena for infertility to be said over the 9 days leading up to surgery. We will pray over our surgeon for steady hands, keen eyesight to identify and repair with delicate precision to the fineness of one human hair, and protection from any adverse events or complications, no matter the post-op fertility results.

Prefer to simply come along for the journey? I will post updates to our Facebook, when surgery is scheduled, complete, and followed up on-successful or not!

We have the best tribe-forever grateful to be so loved! We would love the opportunity to be able to personally thank each and every person who plays a role in this portion of our journey to children. While we understand if your prefer to donate anonymously, we hope you will let us share your name with our children some day. It truly takes a village, and this journey has solidified that we will neither forget nor take for granted everything and everyone who have gotten us to this point♥️