Shauna Rae is taking her fertility matters into her own hands.

In an update posted to her YouTube channel on Tuesday, July 23, the I Am Shauna Rae alum got vulnerable about her ongoing fertility journey. When the reality star was six months old, doctors discovered that she was born with a malignant glioma on the right side of her brain. She was then immediately rushed into surgery and underwent chemo with doctors prioritizing saving her life over her ability to have children in the future.

After her latest checkup with her fertility doctor, she discovered that she was “very low in the egg count.” Though fans saw her undergo the process of freezing her eggs in season 2 of I Am Shauna Rae, she revealed that she didn’t have to funds to go through with the procedure.

“I wanted to go through with getting my eggs frozen to save a chance if I want to have children. I want the same opportunities as anyone else,” she explained. “But I learned that at that time … my insurance would not cover anything, and the medicine alone would be $9000 or something dollars, and it was a total that came to close to $15,000 to $20,000 and I did not have the funds at that point to go through with the procedure on my own.”

Instead, she chose to focus on her business, but the thought of not being able to produce children never left her mind.

“I’ve been lately having a lot of thoughts about if I do want a family and if I do want a baby that looks like me, or if I want to go through adoption or whatever,” she continued. “You know, at the end of the day, I genuinely don’t care … a child, someone to raise, someone to grow with, in a sense, is all in the same for me. ”

Still, Rae said there’s “something about the opportunity, the ability” to produce children she’s holding onto. She explained that she was raised to believe that “I am just like anyone else and I can do things just like anyone else can.”

While she’s grown to realize that she may not be able to do all things, Rae said she’s “accepted certain things about my fertility and the baby situation.

“At 16, I fully accepted that I was not going to have children, and I was not going to be able to carry a child or even have a child that was related to me,” she said. As she grew more and more emotional, Rae admitted that season 2 of her TLC series had given her a sense of “hope” but it had been “stripped away.”

“It was a really hard thing to mourn,” she said of being unable to freeze her eggs. “I’ve been battling a lot of loss lately and a lot of change and a lot of sadness that’s caused this — I guess I would say situational depression.”

“I just want the opportunity that everyone else has. I don’t think it’s, like, fair, unfortunately,” she added while holding back tears.

Rae noted that she had “no control over my fertility being hindered.” Though she needs to see if her insurance will see her fertility treatments in relation to her cancer, Rae said she needed to freeze her eggs within the next “six or so months, probably sooner.”

While women her age place one to four on the fertility scale, Rae revealed that she’s dropped from a 0.8 to a 0.41.

“I’m thinking by 26 I’ll be infertile and with every day that passes [there’s] probably is less of a chance, which is okay but it’s really hard to accept,” she continued. “I need to do the egg-freezing procedures as soon as possible.”

To raise money for her procedure, Rae announced she was organizing a GoFundMe page so she could freeze her eggs without “hindering” her quality of life.

“I’m going to get it done either way but any help is beneficial and you have no clue how grateful I would be,” she said through tears. “The ability to do this is something I gave up when I was 16 years old.”

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On her GoFundMe, Rae opened up further about how her chemotherapy had affected her life. In addition to her fertility procedures, she revealed that she needed dental implants to save her teeth.

“In order to have a chance at the same opportunity as others, I am asking those who are willing to, for help,” she wrote. “I don’t have longer than six or so months until I potentially become infertile and as far as a timeline for my teeth, I’m holding onto them until I can’t. Anything at all can help towards a healthy future for myself.”