My Name is Courtney Pratt and this is a bit of my story for you.
I had known since an early age that there was something different going on with me. My health wasn’t what a fifteen year old should look like. I didn't know just how serious my condition was though. I started showing symptoms as a teen but through the many blood tests and bone marrow biopsies no one could ever pin point my condition. So, I started living my normal life just as anyone would. Until the 2020 Covid pandemic hit and I started to feel unlike myself in more ways than one. I thought, like everyone at the time, that my mental health had slipped due to the pandemic but also, that there was something .. wrong in my body. I was right. Because of this I was hospitalized and told that I was experiencing an expected (by their knowledge) a worsening and decline in my health. I basically had no blood or platelets. After discharging from the hospital I was referred by my current doctor to another Oncologist; one who specialized in rare blood disorders. So, at the age of 29, I sat down with this doctor who looked at me and wasted no time asking me if I had ever had my Telomeres tested. Telomeres? Not knowing what that even meant at the time, he drew blood and sent it off to Johns Hopkins that day. A few months later, my diagnosis came back; Dyskeratosis Congenita or "Short Telomere Disorder" for short. My health puzzle had been solved however, there was much to learn about this new diagnosis I had finally received. I flew out to Johns Hopkins and went to the Telomere Clinic at the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.
To say I was in awe at their knowledge of my condition would be a severe understatement. Once I learned every bit I could about my condition, I did not leave there the same person. Sitting there with research doctors, I fell to the floor. The severity of my disorder and the gravity of the situation hit me harder than anything I had ever experienced in life. Nothing could prepare me for what I learned that day. My life had been turned upside down and I no longer could see the future I had once saw for myself. I saw little to no future.
With all that being said, I can’t say enough about the hospital that helped save me when our government didn’t lift a finger. Even without health insurance, TriStar Centennial Medical Center did everything in their power to keep me alive in March 2025 and then helped again, financially, as much as they could with paying all of the costs that came with it. They helped me get so much of it covered by charity organizations. I’ll never be able to thank TriStar, the staff, my care team (doctors and nurses that I had worked with for two years prior to all of this) that hand a hand in saving my life. What a year 2025 was! A year I got to see just how many people loved me and would rally and come to my aide with prayers, (some came in person to pray over me). I was in a medically induced coma but that didn’t stop so many from coming just to sit with my mom and me for a while to offer her a hand of emotional support while she sat bedside begging me to come back and wake up. I’m constantly told of the full family waiting room by my doctors who were surprised by the amount of people who had made that room their permanent spot. So many of you wanted to be there for my family as well. They needed your support as well while they sat there and just had to pray, hope, and wait.
To wake up in the place I had previously worked for two years and see the very people I had spent those two years with and came to respect and love .. I will never be able to unhear their voices and faces trying to calm and comfort me once they started the waking up process. As I started to realize I didn’t know what was going on; this is not what I last remembered. I can’t move my hands, and there’s something down my throat; restrains and a breathing tube, and .. I know this place. I’m in an ECMO, (life support for easier understanding), room but why! Many of them heard the commotion and came to my side immediately; to help give comfort and help me understand what was going on. Everything from that particular moment is still blurry and I have zero memory of anything that happened for 3 days prior to being put under. The one thing I cling to in my mind is the feeling that I wasn’t alone.
What I’m asking for is the last thing I’ve ever wanted to do .. ask for financial help taking my life back. After all that I’ve been through, the medical bills alone are drowning me; $25,000 (originally WAY more), is just ONE of the bills from emergency services : the efforts to save me and then being put on ECMO. Other bills include thousands of dollars due to all the procedures and outsourced specialists that had a hand in my care. The transfusions of all kinds, anesthesia, etc.) - some have already moved into the debt collection phase. The calls and letters and derogatory marks on my credit are outstanding and overwhelming.
Each month, for being disabled, I barely have the money for living expenses; much less for medical bills and going further future medical expenses. I know that we all have our burdens and financially, most aren’t doing that well just as I am not. I have so, so many people who care and love me; I’m only asking if you will help me attempt to get out from under the looming dark cloud that’s over my head - medical debt from fighting for my life when the state would not help by giving me health insurance. I was finally given insurance in August but by then everything had happened and it only helps a little with going forward, current and future medical cost. If you could find it in your heart to help out; anything helps even if it’s just a share of my story to others who may be more able to help with previous and future expenses from this wild ride. I would be forever thankful.
I could type pages upon pages about my condition and the struggles I have been through since my diagnosis. The weekly blood and platelet transfusions, the other severe sickness because of my condition, numbers of trips in an ambulance, my mental health, needing a transplant (then receiving the transplant), chemo, losing all my hair and independence, and being put on ECMO. Through it all, the bad and the worse, I haven't lost my faith. I know God may have given me a rough terrain to walk but, He is walking it right next to me. I know He has a greater plan for me than letting me lose this battle. They say He gives his toughest battles to his strongest soldiers. I have no plan on stopping the fight. This won’t beat me, but the bills might.
TriStar Centennial Children’s Hospital & Cincinnati Children’s Hospital are working so hard on caring for me since this fight isn’t even close to being over. I will never be able to repay the support but know this please - my heart is so overflowing with gratitude and love to all that has helped in this battle and to the future ones who will come to my aide.
Thank you for reading my story & may God bless each and every one of you! 💜
Jeremiah 29:11: "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future”
"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another" (John 13:34-35)
^ For those of you that don’t prefer a fundraising site.
