The Valley Star Jesse Lally’s Girlfriend Lacy Nicole Says She’s Freezing Her Eggs Again After Lengthy Endometriosis Journey

Lacy Nicole is opening up about a difficult experience.

The philanthropist and mental health advocate, 35, appeared on the Infertile AF podcast and spoke about her experience with endometriosis, which ultimately led her to both in vitro fertilization (IVF) and freezing her eggs. Nicole, who is The Valley star Jesse Lally’s girlfriend, explained that she always wanted to be a mother.

“I had a really unique experience where I didn’t learn I was infertile when I was trying to have a family,” says Nicole. “It’s something that really enraged me to my core, and it still does, which is why I became an advocate and a public speaker for the endo community and reproductive disease.”

“It came on suddenly, but once I was unwell…I could not find answers,” she continues. “And it was all over body unwell. So I obviously, off the bat, didn’t correlate it to a painful period or a reproductive disease, but I was in and out of ER rooms. I was collapsing and fainting on floors. They took out my appendix wrongfully because I was in so much pain. They were like, ‘Let’s just try this!’” 

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Her illness began when she was around 25. Nicole says that in the span of three months, she’d been to the ER around 28 times.

“I had gone through a really bad accident and I kind of heard the same thing from almost every ER tech — which I don’t like to discredit physicians as a whole, but a lot of times, women, specifically young females, are gaslit by their provider,” she says. “And I heard a majority of the time, ‘This is just anxiety disorder. This is just PTSD. You need to get on an antidepressant.’ And I have painful periods, which off the bat I just assumed it was normal.”

Now, Nicole says, she realizes that having debilitating period pains is not normal. Throughout her illness, she gained and lost a lot of weight and also had very low hemoglobin levels.

“Nobody ever correlated it to my period. And I would go to by OB, who I’d seen for 10 years, so you assume they’re doing the best they can for you,” explains Nicole. “And I started to say, you know, ‘I’m on Google, I think I have endometriosis. I think I have adenomyosis.’ And she was like, ‘No, we’ll just put you on a birth control. No, I don’t think so because you don’t have this symptom.’”

Finally, the doctors agreed to perform an exploratory surgery, since that’s one of the only ways to diagnose endometriosis.

“And I ended up having stage 4 endo and it had taken over my ovaries where it was cutting off my circulation and that’s why I was hunched over, vomiting,” she says. “Because what would happen is that it would squeeze off my circulation, I would lose all blood flow for 3-5 min.”

“It was in my lungs, which is why I would have these crazy things where I was losing my voice and coughing. And it had taken over. I had scar tissue all over,” shares Nicole. “And upon having this surgery, I was so defeated because they were like, ‘Well, now you can never have kids.’”

“I remember [the doctor] handed me a pamphlet on surrogacy and he was like, ‘You know, with your one good ovary, you should really look into freezing your eggs. They’ll do better if they’re fertilized and getting a surrogate.’ And I was like, ‘Woah, woah woah.’”

At that point, Nicole explains that she was engaged but not married, and wasn’t ready to have kids. She ended up having surgery and went on the drug Lupron, which put her in chemical menopause.

“So I went into menopause at a young age,” she says. “And then after, this was still kind of a timeline where I really trusted my physician. I was kind of like, ‘He went to school for this. I’m just going to take whatever they say.’ But Lupron was not for me. I know again we’re not one size fits all. These side effects were worse than the endo, as least for me.” 

She decided to freeze her eggs, since she knew she wanted to have babies. But unfortunately, every time she went in, she didn’t have any follicles.

“I do believe — again this is just my experience — I do believe it was just years of mismanagement on the physician’s end, autoimmune diseases that had coincided that I didn’t know about until I really dove in,” says Nicole of what contributed to her infertility. “Hormonal issues that I didn’t know about until I dove in, which again is like a full-time job.”

“I immediately met with IVF specialists. I started interviewing them. I wanted to find the right person for me. I didn’t have follicles when we were trying to do IVF. And then COVID hit and so each time we went in, it was just a failed experience,” she adds.

“After like the 8th round of us trying, I gave up. And then I suffered a miscarriage naturally. So when I had the miscarriage, I was actually really grateful. I mean obviously, I was upset. But I was like, ‘My body can do this.’ This means I’m ovulating, this means I’m making follicles. And this was after a break in the IVF process.”

Nicole admits she did “crazy, voodoo” things in order to get both her hormone levels and health in check, and was ultimately able to conceive naturally.

“I had an array of issues during my pregnancy and unfortunately I cannot carry again. But I ended up conceiving naturally after five years,” Nicole shares. “[The doctor] said it was a miracle. And I said, ‘Twice?’”

Now, Nicole says she’s seeing a different physician and is in the process of freezing her eggs for a second time.

“And now, I’m going through the process again of freezing my eggs with a new physician who I absolutely adore, Dr. Arnold in Beverly Hills,” she explains. “But we’re taking a completely different approach, which I’m really grateful for.”

“This time around, I have somebody really advocating for me in my physician. I have somebody really fighting for the ‘why’ and getting all of these things pacified before we’re even freezing my eggs.”