Help Danica raise money

Hi, I'm Danica, and I am an endo warrior! This is my endo story:

I suffered as a teen from period pain that made me feel like I was going to pass out and throw up. This was dismissed by my doctor as normal. I was given a prescription for birth control and sent on my way, and this masked my symptoms for a few years, until I was experiencing more and more severe pain every cycle until I was finally referred to a general gynecologist.

I was diagnosed with Stage 4 Deep Infiltrating endometriosis via expert ultrasound in early 2020. I am thankful that my gynecologist recognized that the severity of my disease was out of her skill range, and she referred me to a specialist. We tried different types of hormones and an IUD, but my pain continued to become more severe.

In June 2020 I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance because the pain was so excruciating, I couldn't get even get up from my bathroom floor to get dressed to go. Fortunately, this moved me up in surgery priority and I had expert excision surgery in early July 2020.

Unfortunately, I was supposed to have a colorectal surgeon on hand, but he determined that "the proper consents weren't done" and "cancer patients couldn't get surgery with COVID, so we should cancel the surgery." We went ahead with the gynecological portion, and I had my  uterus, both tubes, one ovary, and my appendix removed and endometriosis excised, as I got a new belly button, as I had umbilical endo as well (apparently rare in people who have not had a c-section!). 

To continue a series of unfortunate events, my remaining ovary went into overdrive after this surgery, causing the endo left on my intestines to grow back. I was back in the same excruciating pain within 3 months of surgery, and it had spread to cover one of my ureters, causing kidney swelling. I was then put on powerful and harmful drugs to suppress ovulation and my pain, and this treatment came with some terrible side effects, but it kept me out of enough pain to keep functioning. With the pandemic, my next surgery kept getting delayed for another year.

Just when I was getting ready to get a referral to the United States for surgery because pain was returning even in chemical menopause, in February 2022, I had my remaining ovary removed and one foot of intestine resected, and the remaining endometriosis removed. I stayed in hospital for 6 days until I was ready to go home and continue my healing journey, and I went back to my work as a virtual phys. ed teacher after 9 weeks.

I can say today two years and a half years later that I am thankfully feeling really good and pretty well pain-free, but I still have remaining side effects from such extensive surgery and long-term pain. Endometriosis stole a lot of quality of life from me, I missed a lot of work I loved doing between pain and many appointments and surgery recovery, and I wasn't able to do a lot of things I enjoyed before I became chronically ill. Being in surgical menopause has been a mentally gruelling journey, uncovering new neurodivergences I was previously unaware of and making it more difficult to cope and contributing to extreme burnout. 

This disease affects so many people, and destroys so much quality of life needlessly due to barriers in diagnosis and treatment. I hope you'll consider sponsoring me so we can end endometriosis once and for all, because everyone deserves to live their best life free from pain!