#SteveStrong: Help Steve & Mendi Fight Cancer

I, and many of their friends & family who will share this GoFundMe link are fundraising for Steve & Mendi Gardner, in order to help them pay for medical bills and living expenses while Steve continues in his over 6 year battle with Male Breast Cancer. This fundraiser is with their approval, which took some convincing, as they are rarely the people to ever seek help from others, they are usually the ones helping.

Many may know Steve and Mendi from their presence in the car community as well as with animal rescues. Some may not be aware, Steve is also an Air Force veteran who served during the Gulf War, and they both have dedicated their careers to working for a government agency whose mission is to protect us all.

Steve’s battle with male breast cancer began a little over six years ago, when he was diagnosed with metastatic stage 4 cancer shortly after finding a lump on his chest in 2017. As male breast cancer is not as common as other forms of cancer, treatment has been a series of trial & error over the years. Through the years of this up & down battle, Steve has continued to work through his chemo and radiation treatments, with a positive outlook, despite the terrible side effects.

In late 2021, as he continued the battle, it was discovered that the cancer had spread to his liver. Despite this horrible news, Steve continued on with his treatment, keeping his ever present positive attitude through it all, and has since had 3 ablations to his liver to attempt to keep the cancer at bay.

In 2022, due to further spread of the cancer, Steve has had to have the lower lobe of his right lung removed. Despite this, yet again, he pushed on, continuing with his recovery from those surgeries, and his ongoing chemo treatments, which were often making him very sick.

Continuing on to 2023, the Cancer has continued to attack Steve’s lungs, requiring more aggressive and experimental treatment, which has had really terrible side effects, making him sicker than any prior treatment. Recently, he became very very ill, with a high fever, unable to be awake without coughing, and needed to be admitted into the hospital. Once in the hospital, tests had found that he now has many small nodes of cancer that have spread to his brain. He is very weak, has struggled to eat, and struggled to maintain balanced blood levels. He is expected to be moved to an inpatient rehab facility shortly.

Through all of this, he and Mendi, the love of his life, are both needing to take unpaid FLMA leave from their jobs, in order to manage his care and advocate for him, and this along with significant amounts of copays and medical bills puts them in a challenging position with medical bills piling up. I am asking for donations via GoFundMe that are going straight to them, in order to help them pay for medical bills, living expenses, and ensuring that Steve is able to receive the health management and treatment through this time.