Help the Cafarelli Family

 
UPDATED (January 6, 2018)

Help the Cafarelli Family with Brain Cancer and Emergency Expenses

Please join me in helping our friends, the family of Nick and Lesley Cafarelli of Minneapolis, with their pressing financial needs, including relief from substantial debt from medical and final expenses related to Nick’s five-year battle with glioblastoma (GBM) brain cancer and costs of recovering from water and mold damage to their home due to record-breaking rainfall in early October.

In the final weeks of Nick’s life, as Lesley and daughters Alex and Ariel focused on caring for their beloved husband and father with distress and sorrow, they were faced with mounting bills for his care and a sudden disaster at home: the need for urgent attention to unexpected water damage and rapid growth of mold in the Cafarellis’ finished home basement and the personal belongings stored there. Without immediate remediation, the family home, Lesley’s main retirement asset, would be unsellable. She had already drawn heavily on retirement savings, and with Nick had incurred mounting debt to stay afloat during his illness. The donations received so far, since the start of this campaign in mid-October, helped with a large portion of the bills Lesley received in November.

Nick died on November 8, 2017, with Lesley and their daughters around him. His funeral was held a few days later. Grieving the loss of a loved one is agonizing under any circumstances but made so much more difficult by financial stress.

The family’s primary need now is to reduce substantially the debt from Nick’s medical expenses—out-of-pocket costs for medications and medical equipment, hospital stays, nursing home care, medical transport, etc.—and final expenses. Our further donations, together with the modest income from Nick’s life insurance policy, will help assure the family that Lesley can manage her ongoing expenses and repayment of a reduced debt load with limited retirement income, letting them focus on grieving and healing from their loss.

Before his death, Nick was relieved to know that his family was receiving help with this financial burden through this GoFundMe appeal, and Lesley is very grateful for the generosity already shown. Please join me in making further progress to meeting the Cafarelli family’s need by making your first or a further donation and by sharing this appeal with your friends and families and encouraging their help. Thank you so much for your help!