Save Niki Burton

My name is JT Schonhoft and I am raising money to help my girlfriend cover her medical debt she has incurred from a disease known as Ulcerative Colitis (inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers in her colon). Even with health insurance, she still has debilitating debt because her medical care is very expensive. She has had to put some of that debt on a credit card because there is no other choice and high interest rates cause that number to keep going up. She has another big surgery coming up that will raise that debt even higher. Not only that, there is a possibility she would need an additional surgery that would cause her to be out of work longer than her company would allow. If we don’t raise money for her she could have this debt hanging over her head for the rest of her life. The reason it’s so important we raise money for her is because the added financial stress just makes her condition worse. Stress is the worst possible thing for her. Ulcers are caused by stress. By removing her financial burden, I believe we can help this girl get her life back!

The money we raise will be used to cover her medical debt that she has already incurred. She currently has about $12,000 worth of debt. She is about to take on about $5,000-$10,000 more.  All of the money raised will cover that debt. Anything we raise over our goal of $20,000 (or above her debt) will be donated to Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America. http://www.ccfa.org

We need to raise this money before mid 2017.

It is so important to me that we raise this money because I care about this girl a lot and she deserves to live a more normal life without such paralyzing debt. She already can’t live a very normal life and then adding a huge financial burden on top of that makes it even worse.

I would be unbelievably grateful if we could even put a small dent in her debt. So would her family.

Thanks for your donations!

Niki’s full story: She was diagnosed with colitis in 2011 and has struggled with many repetitive treatments. Each treatment was multiple thousands of dollars and insurance didn’t cover it. Eventually she had to get her entire colon removed so all of the ulcers would be removed with it. They left a small piece of the colon so they could make a j-pouch. The j-pouch now acts as her colon. It doesn’t do a very good job if you ask me. She has uncontrollable digestion and it affects her every ever day of her life. In fact, she feels some kind of pain or discomfort about every 15 minutes. She’s not alone either, this is a disease that affects approximately 700,000 young adults (ages 15-30). Most researchers believe colitis is caused by genetics, the environment and the immune system.