If you know me, you know how important Belle is to me.  We've spent the past 11 years together and she has been with me through some tough times - through my grandparents (the most influential people in my life) passing away, through three long years of  law school, and through the difficult beast that was the California bar exam.  And just this past weekend, I was informed that Belle has cancer.  It's a treatable cancer called soft tissue sarcoma, but it requires surgery and radiation due to the location of the tumor.  The surgeon needs to go in and cut out the tumor so that it doesn't continue to grow and spread to surrounding tissue, and that will be followed up by radiation to make sure that all the bad tissue has been found and removed or killed.

Belle, at 11 and a half years old, feels great.  You wouldn't think there's anything wrong with her just to look at her.  I'm not even sure she realizes what's going on.  And that's why I have to fix her.  She's always been there for me, so now I need to be there for her.  

The expenses are high and, being in my first years as a public defender, my budget is pretty tight.  Belle is set to have surgey on June 20, with the radiation treatment to start about a month later.

If you can contribute to Belle's medical costs, I will be forever grateful for you helping me treat her.  Even if you can only give $5, every amount helps and will go toward the cost of her pre-surgery workup, surgery, and radiation treatment which totals around $7,000.