Stage 4 Ovarian Girl needs Superheroes.

My name is Laura and this is where I am.


Last year I started feeling funny. I kept working but I knew something was wrong. No energy, bloated, couldn't think clearly...it was awful! I'd just started at a new department at work and I'd applied for the mgmt position so I absolutely couldn't be sick. I had no time to be sick!



Then I almost fainted in a parking lot. I went to the doctor and he told me it was early onset of menopause. I didn't question him. He's a doctor. Right?

He prescribed birth control pills so I took them. For a long time I took them. Months. Wondering why I STILL felt so horrid. He suggested iron supplements and maybe a multivitamin. He told me hormones take a few months to 'kick in'. Unfortunately for me, with ovarian cancer, taking hormones (like birth control) was like adding diesel oil to a fire. BOOM!

Boy, did I feel dumb waking up on the bathroom floor with my dog licking my face and looking extremely worried.



It wasn't menopause. Unfortunately, it was stage 4 ovarian cancer and my marker was over 9000. It was all through me. I got hauled off to hospital and into surgery twice within 4 days.


I'm a superhero. I really am. I don't believe that number.9000+?... Heck no.

Fortunately, I have years of practice in positive thinking and upbeat outlooks. What I don't have is money. I was given $736 a month disability payments, bless their hearts, but unfortunately I can't live on that. Who has money? No one I know. So here I am. Asking for the kindness of strangers. Maybe even friends.

So the bills mounted, the electricity almost got shut off, the landlords are very kind so they try to understand when the rent gets paid 27 days late, lost the Internet for awhile and now I am reduced to buying cheap hamburger and rice and cooking and sharing it with my 2 cats and 2 dogs. Happy days...

Mom's birthday is August 20th. All I can give her is a card. I drew it. It's a nice card. But I wanted to give her a real present.

She's been there for every doctors appt, every treatment, every surgery, every dose of chemotherapy...she's been there, smiling. Telling me I look pretty. Pretending she doesn't cry from helplessness when she gets home.

I'm going to beat this, but it's so hard to see the toll it's taking on my family. My uncle and my sister in law and my beautiful cousins sent me money and thank goodness they did because that's what kept the power on. I've applied to groups for assistance but most of them are snowed under with requests and help has been intermittent and never enough to do more than just pause the crisis.

Now...I just want to pay off my $750 credit card bill. Fill the tank with propane, because winter is coming, and put some money in the bank for the light and cable and the phone. And ferry passes so I can get to my doctors appts. And dog food. Real dog and cat food. My oncologist said I can go back to work on October 1st. so even though it seems like a huge amount of money to raise, it's about what I would earn at work until Oct 15th when I get my next paycheck.

And I want to pay a vet to look at Bella. She is old and sick and has a broken tooth. Bella was abandoned at a Medford OR rest stop last month with a sign around her neck that said 'My name is Bella. My family can't take care of me.' And they left her.

When my niece found her on her journeys (the 60's are alive and well in that child) she brought her to me as I was the closest relative. Never thinking 'Oh wait, Auntie Laura is sick!' Bless her heart she brought me poor Bella and Bella is SO happy. I shaved her mats off and gave her a nice flea bath and fed her our yummy food and she immediately found a comfortable chair and settled down.



How can I take her to the humane society? No one is going to take her. She's sort of smelly and she's sick and old and tired. She just needs someone to believe in her and she'll get better.

Like me.