Becky Myers

Becky Myers’ Help Hope Live Campaign Story

Becky is a disabled former veterinary nurse who enjoyed providing specialized care to her mostly feline and canine patients. She was passionate about geriatric medicine and pain management, especially for cats as they have fewer options available. She misses her career and looks forward to getting back into the veterinary field, possibly as a customer service representative, after her liver transplant.

She was a North Carolinian all her life before moving to Maryland for medical care and to be closer to one of her sisters and nephews in Maryland.

In October 2016, Becky had acute pain in her abdomen and had digestive symptoms while working overnight shift at her current emergency and critical care veterinary hospital. After the ER and specialist visits, she was eventually diagnosed with a rare autoimmune liver disease called Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. There is no cure for it, only symptomatic treatment and liver transplant.

Her bile ducts of her liver and outside her liver were attacking themselves, causing narrowing, a symptom called “beading,” scar tissue, and fibrosis. She was very ill for many months, having difficulty paying copays and deductible as she could just barely afford the monthly insurance premiums. She lost a quarter of her body weight, muscles atrophied, a jaundiced skeleton of a body that could only keep down a liquid diet for 6 months before regaining weight.

Then, Becky was diagnosed with another autoimmune liver disease that stumped liver specialists for two years before declaring it was Autoimmune Hepatitis in 2019. Another incurable diagnosis with symptomatic management and liver transplant on the horizon.

She couldn’t tolerate the immunosuppressants she was prescribed, as they caused vomiting back to back for hours before anti-nausea meds took effect. Her overlap of the two liver diseases is very rare and difficult to put into remission her doctors warned. The medications she did absorb and stay on all had side effects that changed her quality of life. High dose steroids for prolonged periods caused osteoporosis, weight gain, high blood pressure, high heart rate, fluid build up in her legs and feet limiting her ability to walk and many other side effects.

The liver diseases cause fatigue, brain fog, severe itchiness, jaundice, lower bone density, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and more.

In her former life, Becky enjoyed playing ultimate frisbee for her college club team, then pickup games and tournaments locally and regionally. She rode horses since she was 14, both English and Western styles, trading mucking stalls for riding lessons in college at NCSU. In her early thirties she started training in Endurance Riding, learning how to race 25 and 50 mile rides, taking care of your horse and teaching it to self care on the route. She’s always been an avid reader, enjoying Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Anne Bishop, Agatha Christie, George R.R. Martin, and many others for a lifetime.

She worked with her dad in carpentry as his assistant and laborer as side work, since veterinary assistants and nurses aren’t well compensated for their labor of love. She picked up relief work at other hospitals as needed to pay the bills. She also landscaped, starting at 13 mowing her family yard and rotating pastures, graduating to others’ yards and gardens when she was 18.

Becky has always been a passionate community volunteer since she was 12, instilled by her Nana and mom, for animal shelters and rescues fostering and visiting with intakes, walking 20 dogs a day, socializing adoptable cats, especially the seniors. She also enjoyed helping her state food bank with organizing and stocking their pantries in the region. The local soup kitchens and shelters also benefited from her volunteering time and energy helping the homeless, veterans, and low income individuals and families.

She was all about keeping families together, helping them help themselves, and even keeping their dogs with help from nonprofits in NC and beyond funding those in need.

Since her diagnosis in 2016, Becky has struggled with her quality of life. All her body’s strength she had built and maintained for decades was gone. No more ultimate frisbee or endurance horseback racing. No more nursing the cats and dogs, even wildlife and exotics rehabbers and clients/owners would bring in. She had to adjust her lens and adapt to her new journey of just survival. Living each day, minute by minute, in the present.

As needed, she has used a cane to assist her balance and mobility. The severe itchiness or abdominal pain will wake her suddenly in the night after she finally fell asleep. Nothing helps the itch anymore. She scratches without even being aware she’s doing it. Nausea and dizziness will hit her suddenly and unexpectedly, so she keeps antinausea meds on her at all times. Sometimes they’re enough, sometimes they’re not effective. Her fatigue is life limiting, as it’s a heavy curtain throughout the day, causing her to fall asleep within minutes of going still and sitting down.

Yet, sleeping overnight in a bed is very difficult due to lower back spinal stenosis and the abdominal pain due to her liver diseases. Becky’s insurance and financial patient assistance will cover her liver transplant surgery. She is fundraising for the post op care, nursing, PT, meds, assistive devices and equipment she will need after the transplant. Recovery is a long slow process and takes the necessary costs to complete successfully. Her transplant team estimates post-transplant care will cost $10,000. This is not covered by insurance or the patient assistance she already has.

After healing and recovering, Becky hopes to start being physically active again and regaining strength that helped her mobility and supported bad knees, hips and shoulders. She looks forward to doing more exercise than walking her dog three times a day. Even just throwing a frisbee with her nephews without becoming severely fatigued or risking injury considering her osteoporosis now. She would be overjoyed to get on a horse again! And going back to volunteering and to work, even just part time, in a veterinary hospital or a research setting with animals, ensuring ethical care and maintenance.

Please donate to Help Hope Live in Becky’s honor today, and ask your friends and family to give, too! Also, please share her campaign page on your social media platforms.

We would love to plan some fundraisers in Becky’s honor, too, so if you are able to help with that, please contact her friend Lois at [email protected]. Thank you for your generous support!

Help Becky regain her quality of life, not just surviving, but thriving, volunteering in her community and working again after her Liver Transplant Surgery and Recovery!

Our family and friends are raising money for the nonprofit Help Hope Live in honor of Becky Meyers to fund uninsured medical expenses associated with a Transplant. Becky has chosen to fundraise with Help Hope Live in part because donations are tax deductible for contributors and will only be used to cover medical and related expenses.

Thank you for your support!!!