Campaign Story

Hello Everyone,

My name is Ashley and I have been married to Ian for 3 years as of 7/24. However, we have been a couple for almost 10 years this December. Ian and I met in band class during middle school. I played trombone and he was a percussionist in the grade below me. However, we didn’t start dating until high school. After high school, I went off to college while Ian finished up his senior year. After high school, Ian joined the Marine Corps Reserves. He did his boot camp training at MCRD San Diego, MCT at Camp Pendleton and MOS training at Fort Lee in Virginia. He was gone for a total of 6 months before returning home and starting at a local reserve unit. Since then, we got married, bought a house and had our first baby, Axl.

In December 2022, right after Christmas, my husband went into the doctors for lab work because he hasn’t been feeling the greatest. The next day, he received a phone call to rush to a hospital 1 1/2 hours from home to be admitted because the doctors were pretty sure he had Leukemia. When my husband was in the ER waiting to be admitted to the cancer floor, the doctor came into the room and told us that we may want to consider sperm banking if we want to have any more children in the future. This information came as a shock at first. It has only been about 6 hours since the doctor called us and told us that my husband most likely had cancer. And now you are telling me that if we want to expand our family future, we have to get the sperm banking done in the next 2 days because chemotherapy can make you infertile. Two days later, the official diagnosis came through that my 24 year old husband had B-Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and he started chemotherapy the next day. He spent the next month in the hospital receiving the first round of chemo therapy and getting stronger so he could go back home. He was discharged from the hospital 2 days before our son’s 1st birthday.

Now that my husband is in remission, we want to start the journey towards baby #2, but it was very shocking the costs of fertility treatment. We have no choice but to do IVF based off the sperm analysis, and our insurance covers nothing fertility related. With my husband’s medical bills from cancer treatment and now fertility treatment costs, we are just looking for any help we can get. We would love to give our son a sibling, and both my husband and I would like at least another child. Axl is the greatest gift we could have ever asked for, and we would love another to complete our family. So, if you are able and willing to give, please help our family’s dreams become a reality.

Much love,

Ashley, Ian and Axl