Alice's Army

I'm not very good writing about myself, this is the best I can do, I don't know how to begin this, I have never asked for help for myself, so please bare with me... With each new year, we hope, we pray, we anticipate a fresh start, a cleansing off of the past year and a hopeful start of new... that is not how my 2019 began. In just 12 short days into the new year, I lost my sweet, loving, brother Johnny. It broke my heart, but I knew he was going to be in a better place. As we were making the arrangements for Johnny, I was experiencing excruciating pain in my feet & legs. I made a promise to my family that after Johnny's funeral I would seek medical attention if I didnt feel any better. I went to urgent care and was diagnosed with a DVT, blood clot in my legs. A couple of weeks passed and I still was not feeling well, my stomach was really bothering me, thinking it was grief from Johnny and the sudden passing of my dear, sweet friend Meredith, so I went to the Emergency Room again at the request of my family and after 12 hours, countless tests, we received the devastating news... I have metastatic liver cancer. More tests followed, pet scan, MRI and my birthday was spent having a liver biopsy. All the tests confirmed, stage 4 pancreatic cancer and it spread to my liver & bones. My treatment started immediately after I was released from the critical care unit (had multiple pulmonary embolism). I have been doing extremely aggressive chemo since the end of February and will continue for as long as I am able. I plan to fight as hard as I can, I have something to truly celebrate... my beautiful daughter Amanda's wedding this November! In the last several months, since my battle with pancreatic cancer began, our expenses have sky rocketed. Due to my incurring, huge (and the amounting smaller ones too, like co pays for doctor visits, and medication from the pharmacy) medical bills, we have maxed out all of our credit cards to help support daily living, food, gas, personal hygiene products, etc and now we are barely surviving, we are no longer making it from paycheck to paycheck. Jim, my loving and kind husband, has been my full time care giver, and working 40 plus hours a week. He has been using his vacation time and taking lost pay hours to get me to my doctor appointments and my treatments which are 2 to 3 days a week for IV hydration, and every other Friday for chemo which lasts 50 hours (8 hours at the center, 42 hours with a portable infuser). We both agreed he needed to go back to doing overtime, so he can accrue some hours and some desperately needed money but that has been difficult with my treatment schedule. My son, Ian, has been a tremendous source of comfort, helping out, even offering to help with expenses, he has a kind heart like his dad, but no kid should have these types of worries. If this is only the first few months of my battle, I fear what the next 3, the next 6, the next 12 months is going to be. I'm tearing up, crying, while writing this, how will we get by? I would never ask this from anyone, but my biggest fear is looming , leaving my family in huge debt. It's not fair to them, after what they have been going through & what they are doing for me. My heart aches for them. I am overwhelmed by the outpour of love and support, there are not enough words to express how truly grateful I am. My faith and the love from so many is what truly gets me through the very difficult days. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!