Help Brittanie Evans Radical Hysterectomy Surgery

Hello, my name is Brittanie Evans. I created this GoFundMe to help with the cost of medical expenses resulting from my life-altering surgery. Thank you for your support. I truly appreciate you.

"...On June 2nd, I went to the emergency room for what I believed to be complications with my stage 4 endometriosis. I spent that week prior in bed curled up in excruciating pain after already visiting a Patient First facility. I took medicine, used a heating pad, and got rest - nothing helped. The pain felt as if someone was ripping my body apart. I’ve never felt pain so severe and so constant. I was whining in pain for 5 hours before calling my OBGYN. She said to me simply, that Friday at 8 a.m., “…Brittanie, I need you to go to the emergency room now…” I was home alone, so I drove myself, driving around 20 mph, to my nearest hospital.

I have to be honest here, I know my body is medically ‘peculiar’. I knew my right ovary was covered in scar tissue. I knew my cervix was altered. I knew I was not going to have great news. I just never thought it would be such horrible news. After hours in the ED, after CT scans and ultrasounds. After a blood test, an EKG, and an X-ray. After probing and pinching and draining my body for more tests. After the most painful pelvic exam - my second pelvic exam of the week. As I lie there crying and apologizing for screaming from the pain. As the nurse lovingly told me not to apologize and that she was sorry for the pain. After fluids were administered by IV and opioids were given every two hours for my constant pain, I was told the most devastating news I had ever heard.

I watched as the PA scooted the black chair up to my bed and placed her hand softly on the railing. She told me that she contacted four OBGYNs and three oncologists. That my CT scan showed a mass so large - the size of a mango - that had expanded my uterus to an abnormal size and was now weighing on my colon, my bladder, and my vagina. She said over the years, the scar tissue from my endometriosis had pulled my cervix backward and altered its positioning. She carefully placed her hands on the bed, mere fingertips away from mine, and said she believed I had endometrial cancer. When she said the words, honestly, I was nodding and “okaying” as if she was telling me the weather for tomorrow. It didn’t register. My brain couldn’t process what she was saying. She, as kindly and tenderly as possible, asked if I needed anything. I didn’t have anything to say. So she gave me more medicine for my pain, an extra pillow, and another warm blanket.

I lay there without knowing I was doing it, I was crying. I called Harrison, who had left briefly, and he came back right away. I don’t even know if I was speaking full sentences. I just remember babbling on the phone. My mother and Harrison were there making sure all the questions I couldn’t ask were being asked. During my discharge, they recognized how severe my pain was and gave me prescriptions for constipation (I wasn’t able to have a bowel movement because the mass was weighing on my colon), ibuprofen, and 18 oxycodone - which she reiterated was completely unheard of. She told me the most anyone gets is 6.

That Monday, as appointed by my doctor, I saw the oncologist. It didn’t click when I heard the word “oncologist”. I still sort of was in disbelief so, no, I was not fully aware of what I was experiencing or what to expect. However, it did click. It clicked when I sat in the waiting room of my oncologist and saw the sparkly pink words taped on the wall that read ‘ Cancer Survivor’.

When I went back to yet another patient room, he came in and told me he saw my CT scan and ultrasound and needed to do his pelvic exam. I admit, I wanted to say no because I feared the pain. This would be my third pelvic exam of the week and my body was weary from it. Regardless, I knew I needed to do it whether I wanted to be in pain or not. He promised he would be gentle and I am thankful that he was. He performed the three-step exam - a vaginal exam, an anal exam, and the exam on my abdomen. Harrison sat in one corner, my oncologist assistant stood to the right of me and I lay flat on the hospital bed as I hear him explain in a gasp that he can feel the mass everywhere.

He finished and told me to get dressed again and that he would be back. I stood up, put my underwear back on, and pulled my dress down. I waited for all of possibly 6 minutes before he came back in. I sat on the edge of the bed and as he started talking to me the fucking world went silent. Like truly, I was hearing him but I wasn’t. Harrison got up and consoled me as I sat there staring at nothing and yet I know I was looking at a chair. My oncologist told me, in the most sympathetic tone that I was to have a full radical open hysterectomy. That he was taking my uterus, my cervix, my fallopian tubes, my right ovary and of course, the cancerous mass. He explained he would try to save my left ovary so I would not go through menopause. I heard it all and yet I heard nothing.

As I left, I had a panic attack in the hallway. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t do anything. I am so grateful for Harrison because I was not capable of leaving that office.

I’m saying this because in 6 days, on June 28th, my life will change forever. I will be as I feel I am now, a shell of a woman. A shell of a person.

These few weeks leading to the surgery have been dealt with hassle from the healthcare facility, telling me that I would have to postpone my surgery - as if it was some fucking elective surgery and not life-threatening - because I could not come up with the almost $18k that was my patient responsibility. While dealing with the date of my surgery approaching like a bomb that will end my life, I had to deal with all the horrible financial problems and issues with the healthcare system. Thankfully my doctor had to tell them that, “…she’ll figure the money out later. This is life-threatening…”

Each day leading to June 28th, I feel like I’m losing my mind. I am required to work and yet I cannot physically be there. The pain that I am feeling still is so painful and debilitating. I take the prescribed oxycodone and ibuprofen like they’re going to solve what cannot be solved. I find myself trying to go to work for a few hours only to leave early from the pain and then pulling over on my way home because I’m crying. I cry so much. I cannot stop crying. I cry in the bath, I cry in the shower, I cry and I weep and I mourn and I cannot stop thinking how heartbroken I truly am. I feel so separated from my body right now that I don’t even feel human anymore. I think and try to rationalize the good and tell myself this means no more pain. I tell myself I’m happy this was caught. I tell myself I will be okay. But I’m lying. I’m not okay.

Harrison tells me that it’s not my fault but then whose is it? Did I not care enough for my body? Did I not nurture her enough? Was I not kind enough?

I feel so secluded and feel my support system is so small and yet did I not bring this on by separating and distancing myself as I battled depression these last few years?

I keep thinking of all that has happened to me and all that I have done. Have I deserved this? Did I bring this on? Was my life trajectory this all along? Was the abuse or the neglect or the depression signs that, yes, this is what happens to unlucky people? Was I always destined to be this person? Was I supposed to be raped by people and by life over and over again in every possible way?

I feel I have had to let go of so many versions of me over my life - many not by my choosing. I wanted so desperately to hold on to this version of me and hoped I could make this person real. I wanted to one day be able to create someone and grow someone in my womb and know I gave them a life better than my own - a life I was deprived of.

It will never happen for me. As I write these words and think these words in my head, I feel I am splitting. I am letting go of someone I will never meet. I will never know her. Like don’t you understand, I will never know this Brittanie. She will not exist in my life anymore. And I’m so sad. I am so so heartbroken because I wanted to know her. I wanted to experience her.

I have never felt a pain like this before and I don’t think I will survive it mentally. I’m afraid of the surgery. It’s invasive. I will spend a few days in the hospital before I spend almost nine weeks of healing. I'm grateful for my mother who will be taking care of me. I’m afraid of those weeks; of ‘healing’. I’m afraid to look down at my body and to see what had to be done. I’m afraid to even look in the mirror now. All I can think of is how my body could never grow a human but has grown something trying to kill me. I feel so betrayed.

I say this all here because I need support. Wherever you are and whatever you believe, please think of me. Because I am afraid. Because I am heartbroken. I don’t know who I am right now and I don’t know if I will have the strength to overcome this…”