What Happened:
After undergoing some testing and about a year of thinking that she had sciatica, we we're informed by Julia's oncologist on Dec 4th 2018 that Julia has Stage 3B cervical cancer. Also, later the same day, we received a call that something wasn't right with a blood test earlier and that we needed to get to an emergency room. Julia hadn't been feeling well for a few weeks, and her blood pressure was extremely high, so we literally walked into our apartment from the oncologist appointment and rushed right back out to the emergency room at Mt Sinai West in Manhattan where we were informed the reason we had to get to the emergency room was that her kidneys were failing due to a tumor (about the size of an orange) blocking her ureters, so urine was backing up into her kidneys which had become a medical emergency.

The Treatment journey:
The team of emergency room doctors worked really fast and relieved the blood pressure and related issues, then Julia was admitted for about 10 days after receiving a procedure called a nephrostomy on each kidney because she was no longer able to urinate normally and instead went into bags from tubes directly inserted into her kidneys.

This really broke Julia's heart because we were told by the medical team that she could no longer continue work playing guitar and singing to entertain pre-schoolers and be her usually active self with the urethral stents and nephrostomy because there could be severe complications if she fell or the tubes we're accidentally pulled out. 

Once Julia's kidneys recovered and her kidneys seemed back to normal on December 26th 2018, a 9 week course of intensive daily radiation and weekly chemotherapy started.  Julia was fine for the first two weeks which is typical, but by the third week, she was starting to lose her appetite and the combination of radiation and chemo was really starting to take it's toll physically and emotionally. By the 4th week of treatment She was no longer able to climb in and out of our loft bed safely and stayed with a friend for the final few weeks of treatment. By then  Julia had lost about 20 lbs, had a severe bout of anemia from the treatment and now has difficulty walking from the external radiation burns and a procedure called brachytherapy where tubes for radiation therapy were surgically inserted into the immediate area around the tumor.

The final radiation treatment was on February 12, 2019, but we were told on February 26th that the radiation treatment would have more efficacy if Julia continued with 3-4 more chemo treatments in mid March with the 2 strongest chemo therapy drugs now that her kidneys were much better although the nephrostomy tubes in her kidneys will remain for up to 6 months as a standard precaution meaning she'll likely be unable to work for most of 2019.  
 
It's been a grief filled journey for us and unfortunately, because Julia is no longer working, we've decided to humbly reach out to friends, family, acquaintances and anyone with the means to help us financially because we have exhausted emergency savings.

Julia is unable to work and function independently while recovering for the next few months and may be out of work indefinitely while needing a way to pay for things like taxis to medical appointments, healthful food for recovery, clothing (looser clothes for radiation affected areas), and prescriptions along with phone & medical bills that will continue piling up.

We're doing the best we can to deal with the adversity of this unexpected situation, so any contribution amount will help  reduce this sudden financial burden and would be appreciated by us beyond words toward helping ease some of the financial stress from our lives immediately and make it easier to focus on Julia's comfort and healing which is our highest priority. 

If you're unable to donate, we totally understand, but we ask that you kindly share this with the humblest gratitude for your empathy.