Hannah's Fight With Endometriosis

Please click on the "Update" link above for the latest developments.

Short Story: Hannah needs surgery for endometriosis so she can (hopefully) stop the painful suffering she is going through. But please read the full version. 

Long Story: You know me as Jacob (or Jake) Ortman. If you know me at all, you know I'm not one to seriously ask for help, especially financially. I also don't usually chat about my family and kids much, leaving their lives private for the most part. That changes today.

Hannah is my oldest of two daughters. She has been suffering with abdominal and pelvic pain beyond the normal level of what being a woman (or human, for that matter) entails. We took her to our family doctor, who ran a couple tests, didn't find a whole lot, prescribed some hormone control (aka birth control) pills, said to check back in a few months. We went through that cycle a couple times, tried a couple different pills, and then went to a local gynecologist after months of suffering.

After an ultrasound, the prognosis showed endometriosis, a painful condition where tissue that normally lives inside the uterus decides to grow outside the uterus. The local gyn's treatment? Either she continues to take yet another pill forever (which hasn't helped thus far) and suck up the pain, or have a hysterectomy. 

She's 17 and would like to have kids someday (and I'd like to have a grandbaby sometime). Hysterectomy isn't something any teenager should have to go through unless absolutely necessary (especially one who is as great with kids as Hannah).  It's already going to be hard enough with endo. There had to be another option. 

We did some research and came upon Dr. Redwine who was a local doctor who pioneered research and treatments (surgically and otherwise) for endometriosis. He was known nation-wide for his expertise. Unfortunately, he retired in 2012. Through the help of my mother, we were able to get in touch with his former nurse, Nancy Petersen, herself an expert in endometriosis research. She flat-out told us: There are no doctors in Oregon, and she can count on one hand the amount of the doctors in the US, that can detect and treat this disease properly. She recommended we talk to a specialist in Gig Harbor, Dr. Cindy Mosbrucker at Pacific Endomteriosis , who worked with Dr. Redwine and is one of the nation's experts at surgical treatments and removal of endometriosis tissues. We tried to get Oregon Health Plan (Hannah's insurance carrier) to cover Hannah's appointment, knowing good and well they wouldn't (they didn't), but still went and saw the doctor anyway, paying out of our own pocket for the consultation and tests. 

The conclusion? The doctors and lab techs in Bend didn't know what they were looking for or what they were seeing, and Hannah's condition was even further advanced, affecting all sorts of tissue and her ovaries, and there is also a mass of some sort in one of her ovaries that wasn't spotted by the docs in Bend (we're not sure what that is, but it needs to be removed).

My wife is better with all the medical terms than I, but long story short: Without surgery to remove the affected tissue, kill the nerve causing some of the pain and to remove whatever is in her ovary, she will likely never have kids and will be in pain for the rest of her life.

We have scheduled the surgery for late August and need the money soon. Since OHP is obviously not going to pay for the surgery (I'm working on an appeal as we speak, but not holding my breath) and putting her on private health insurance likely wouldn't work (thanks to pre-existing conditions), it looks like we are going to be paying for this surgery out of pocket. The doctor is offering us a good discount on her fees, but estimates are looking like it will be around $15,000 for the pre-op, surgery, recovery, etc... . We thankfully have a family member in Gig Harbor that has agreed to let us stay with them for the seven nights we'll need to be up there.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. All donations will be going towards medical treatments ($15,000 is an estimate at this point -- could be more, could be less, based on any sort of complications and whether we can negotiate better rates). 

Thanks much for making it this far and for taking some of your valuable time to read this.

-- The Ortman Family
Jacob, Lydia, Hannah and Michelle