Campaign Story

Hello, my name is Kelli and I’m 36 years old. My boyfriend, Shane (42), and I have been together for 10 years. I have known for almost my entire adult life that I wanted to be a mother one day. Every summer when I was younger, even, I would wake up at the crack of dawn and go to work with my mom who worked at a daycare center, just so I could help with the kids.

As I got older, the feelings turned stronger and I knew that I would have a beautiful little family of my own one day. However, back in 2012 I found out that I had some uterine fibroids. My OB at the time said they were fine and would go away. Fast forward two years to 2014 when my flow became so heavy it affected my daily life, I looked for a new OB, as my current one said there was nothing he could do.

My new doctor did an ultrasound and found out that there were so many fibroids in my uterus that she couldn’t even count the number. Her suggestion? Surgery. So in November 2014 I had a hysterocopic myomectomy (my 1st of 4). She said she got out everything she could, and I should be ok. Well I wasn’t. My flow got even heavier after that, and another ultrasound was done. The firboids were back, and more of them were there. Her next plan of attack was the Mirena, to help my flow. That also did not help AT ALL. So I had it removed in 2017.

In August of 2018, I had my second surgery. In post-op, she told Shane and I that there were just so many in there, but she got out what she could. She also never said anything about not being able to get pregnant. She was 100% sure that I would have no problems conceiving.

Another 2 1/2 years goes by, still not pregnant, so I went back in to see her. She suggested an endometrial biopsy to make sure that was ok. She did this in the office (so painful) and when she was done, looked at me and Shane and said “well the only thing we have left to do now is remove the uterus”. My own OB didn’t know my history!! I had been seeing her for 7 years and she just wrote my issues off with “hey, let’s go for a hysterectomy”. I almost fell off of the table. I was shattered. I mentioned that I couldn’t have kids without a uterus, and she just said “no. We don’t need to take it out, you can still have kids”. I lost all faith, especially in her.

Here we are, 9 years after my original surgery and I’m meeting with a reproductive endocrinologist for the first time. It was never even suggested before. I had to figure it out on my own. The doctor I met was incredible. Our first initial visit/consult lasted well over an hour, which is unheard of nowadays. He looked at my blood work and said everything was great, egg supply was where it should be for a 36 year old, hormone levels were perfectly in line. Next step was a saline ultrasound to check the shape of the uterus and the tubes (which are wide open, thank heavens).

The ultrasound showed that there were two large fibroids on either side of the uterus, creating an hourglass shape (there were smaller ones, too, but those two really stood out). We ended up scheduling surgery that same day for the following month. My 3rd hysterocopic myomectomy.

Surgery went very well, recovery was a breeze. He talked to us post-op and said he removed all the firboids from one side and would remove the other side in a month. I had a foley catheter placed in my uterus so the sides wouldn’t heal together. He was very optimistic about the outcome!

Surgery #4, the following month…got in really early in the day (he used one of his research days to do my surgery since it was so time sensitive). Post-op this time was not as good. I had a hard time waking up, and the news I got was even worse. Doc came and talked to me, informed me that the fibroids that had just been removed less than a month prior had already started coming back. The outlook now was bleak. He said I have roughly a 1% chance of carrying a child in my uterus, and I had two options…surrogacy and adoption. I have never felt more pain, sadness, anger even, in my life. This was my dream and now I cannot have it.

I started researching those two options, and found that surrogacy is so monetarily unattainable for people that I don’t know how anyone does it! I would never be able to afford it. Adoption is less expensive, but still very costly. Grants and fundraising are just about our only way of achieving this goal, and I am looking and hoping for any help I can get. I have savings, but was saving that for baby’s college, or wedding, or whatever they needed it for and it would be totally financially irresponsible to drain that savings.

I know there are people out there with good hearts, and I’m hoping they find me, and are moved by my story. Please help in any way you can. It is appreciated more than you would ever know.