Help Ashley afford recovery time!
22 year old Ashley Meadows was rushed to the Emergency Room at 4am on Tuesday June 10th due to severe pain consuming her whole body causing loss in sight, loss in mobile functions, and consistent vomiting. She was quickly diagnosed with severe Stage 4 Endometriosis and was scheduled for an emergency surgery for that day at 2pm. It all happened so fast. After the surgery they informed Ashley that she will be unable to work for at least 6 weeks. Luckily, she had just been approved for OHP so most of her medical bills will be covered, but is not eligible for disability in the state of Oregon. A month and a half of no income is enough to totally derail Ashley's financial life. Let's all come together and help her worry about NOTHING but her recovery.
$1500 is the goal. That is the minimum she needs to pay all of her bills and medications for the month.
What Happened
These symptoms were not new to Ashley, but they hadn't
debilitated her like this in a long time. Ashley had been struggling
with this unknown disease for over 2 years, uninsured for her entire
adult life, and having little to no options for battling this illness.
Every single day Ashley experienced some sort of discomfort or pain
related to this disease. Everything in her life suffered due to her
condition.
Without health insurance Ashley was desperate to fix
these health problems on her own. Ashley had adopted a healthy Vegan
lifestyle, was very active everyday, and saw a discounted
acupuncturist twice a month. With all of these improvements in her
lifestyle, her condition persisted. She had no choice but to smile and
work as hard as anyone else despite the pain and discomfort.
One
magical day Ashley got approved for Health insurance and immediately
started booking doctors appointments to get to the bottom of what was
going on! 3 hours before an ultrasound appointment, her body had just
had enough.
She went straight to the Emergency Room where they
were able to do an internal and external ultrasound right away. They
were able to pin point the problem pretty quickly. What they found was
way worse than any of us would have imagined.
Ashley's left
ovary had a blood filled cyst the size of a large russet potato,
reaching all of the way up to her belly button and her right ovary had
another blood filled cyst the size of medium grapefruit! For those of
you who don't know, the ovaries are supposed to be the size of
walnuts!
She also had other small cysts and abrasions surrounding
her ovaries causing all of her surrounding organs to bind together.
This kind of attack on the ovaries is called Endometriosis.
There are 4 stages of this disease, 1. Being very mild and 4 being the
worst case scenario. Ashley had stage 4. There is no known cure or
known cause, but there are long term treatment options available.
Luckily.
They were able to make a 5 inch incision on Ashley's
pelvis under her bikini line. From here they drained and removed the
cysts, cleaned up the surrounding areas, and sealed her back up. After
2 1/2 days Ashley was able to go back home and start eating solid food
again. It's going to be a long recovery for this strong little lady,
but with our help hopefully it doesn't have to be stressful.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read about Ashley. If you can't help financially, share with your friends and send good energy her way!
*Blossoming Lotus will be having a fundraiser for Ashley's recovery fund someday next week. 10% will go directly to her. More info on this soon.