Campaign Story

Hello, my name is Elizabeth Manzano and my husbands name is Jose Manzano. I have always had irregular cycles growing up and always worried about cervical cancer due to my mother having it at such a young age and me being so much like her. At a pretty young age I was told that I had PCOS. Being young I wasn’t really worried about what it meant or what it could do to by body. About 13 years ago my husband and I started trying naturally to get pregnant. Negative test after negative test I started falling into a depression and told my husband that I couldn’t do it anymore and we needed to figure out what and why we couldn’t get pregnant. The first specialist I found stated “Oh your ovaries look like chocolate chip cookies with extra chips. But if you lose weight you should get pregnant.” I left her office madder and more upset then I came in. My husband and I did more research finding a true specialist in fertility and made another appointment with that doctor. I told him from the beginning that I knew I was “over weight” and that I was working on it but that wasn’t going to be the reason I accepted to the real cause as to why I couldn’t get pregnant. He stated that if I was working on it and that I knew he would never say anything, and he never did. So we started with a Clomid cycle and timed intercourse. We did that three times before adding Letrozole with Clomid and timed intercourse. Did that once before he added an HCG trigger shot. With no luck the doctor told us that he wanted to try a Mini IVF so that it could be covered by our insurance. We got eight eggs retrieved and on day four we lost all our eggs. When asked why they stated that my egg didn’t mature properly. A few years later, current time, we tried again with a FULL IVF treatment plan with a specialized clinic by us. We found a loan company that loans to fertility patient specifically for IVF treatments and got approved for exactly what we needed for this clinic to do a full IVF treatment. This doctor did all the needed blood work and stated that everything looked amazing and that she had high hopes for us. When I asked her why I was told my egg didn’t mature properly but yet her test are all saying everything is perfect she just said it’s due to the PCOS. I HATE that answer.. We did a the egg retrieval and got 23 eggs, one died within the first day, they fertilized the remaining 22 eggs and 12 took. So we were just excited to have the 12 fertilized eggs! Then on Day 6 update of the eggs we found out they all died via email with no explanation. The doctor said that she was going to talk to the Embryologist to see if they have an idea as to why and get back with us. They still don’t know what caused them to all die and the answer “it’s PCOS” was throw out there again. Currently still emotional about it all but still not willing to give up trying I am asking for any help to keep us going on trying again. We are pretty much at our max when it comes to loans and monthly bills, we can’t get more money from banks or any loan places. I already traded my Dream Truck in for a paid off vehicle, we have done everything physical possible to get the first loan approved. We don’t have a way to try again. Please help us grow our family. Anything helps and gets us that much closer to try again. I can’t imagine our lives without little feet crawling, stomping, or running around our house. Thank you for reading and showing support.