Joyce, Multiple Myeloma
Donation protected
On March 20, 2017, my mom, Joyce, was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma cancer.
On April 2, 2017, she had a temperature of 91 degrees, passed out and remained unconscious until paramedics arrived. She was admitted into the hospital for 21 days.
On April 25, two days after she was released, she was back in the hospital until April 28 due to other complications.
As for now, my mom is back in the hospital. She was admitted last Wednesday, May 31st and is still there. Our family was notified that she will be transferred from Lake Forest Hospital to Northwestern in Chicago within the next couple days to further look at her heart that is now being affected aggressively from the multiple myeloma cancer.
Prior to the diagnosis, she had been dealing with excruciating pain in her jaw and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and fatigue. For months, she saw every kind of doctor out there. It started off with possible arthritis, to a lung disease, to asthma to finally cancer and now, her heart and adrenal gland are severely affected.
As many of you know, my mom is extremely hard working. She is an accountant for a company in Zion, Illinois but had to leave work once she was diagnosed in March yet decided to finally go back May 22. Despite her uncontrollable nausea, fatigue, the fact that she has a walker and can't walk more than fourteen steps without having to stop and wait several minutes to get her breath back, she went back to work. She lasted a day and a half there.
To put things more into perspective, my mom has lost about 45 pounds. She cannot open her jaw to eat nor can she hold an appetite long enough to finish her food. As mentioned above, she is unable to walk or even hold a glass.
Her going back to work for now and possibly forever is something that I hope I can relieve her from through this go fund me.
She receives chemo every Friday and for the next three days after, she is bound to her bed.
I have seen my mom cry not only because of this illness and the fear of leaving this earth too early, but also because the amount of bills has grown to be more than anyone can even fathom, and its only been 11 weeks.
She is not a woman to flaunt her problems, if anything, she keeps a lot of personal things inside so I decided to take the initiative of raising money.
The next steps in making sure she becomes healthy again is seeing what Northwestern Hospital says about her heart. After this, and once eventually released from the hospital, we pray that she will be accepted into the stem cell transplant program. There she will be admitted for anywhere from 2-6 weeks depending on how her body accepts it.
I ask you all, if you're at all able to help, to please do so. My brother and I could not be more appreciative and grateful for every kind soul that has prayed for my mom and her recovery.
The money is for the enormous amounts of bills and for a live-in nurse that she hopes to get when my brother and I go back to school in August. She is unmarried and the only income she once received was from herself.
Multiple Myeloma is not curable but it is treatable and helping my mom with these bills gives her the ease of focusing on going into remission.
By praying, smiling, laughing and seeing her family and friends, I know my mom will be okay and be able to see everything she planned on seeing in life.
Thank you from the bottom of my family's and my heart for your thoughts and contribution.

On April 2, 2017, she had a temperature of 91 degrees, passed out and remained unconscious until paramedics arrived. She was admitted into the hospital for 21 days.
On April 25, two days after she was released, she was back in the hospital until April 28 due to other complications.
As for now, my mom is back in the hospital. She was admitted last Wednesday, May 31st and is still there. Our family was notified that she will be transferred from Lake Forest Hospital to Northwestern in Chicago within the next couple days to further look at her heart that is now being affected aggressively from the multiple myeloma cancer.
Prior to the diagnosis, she had been dealing with excruciating pain in her jaw and an overwhelming sense of exhaustion and fatigue. For months, she saw every kind of doctor out there. It started off with possible arthritis, to a lung disease, to asthma to finally cancer and now, her heart and adrenal gland are severely affected.
As many of you know, my mom is extremely hard working. She is an accountant for a company in Zion, Illinois but had to leave work once she was diagnosed in March yet decided to finally go back May 22. Despite her uncontrollable nausea, fatigue, the fact that she has a walker and can't walk more than fourteen steps without having to stop and wait several minutes to get her breath back, she went back to work. She lasted a day and a half there.
To put things more into perspective, my mom has lost about 45 pounds. She cannot open her jaw to eat nor can she hold an appetite long enough to finish her food. As mentioned above, she is unable to walk or even hold a glass.
Her going back to work for now and possibly forever is something that I hope I can relieve her from through this go fund me.
She receives chemo every Friday and for the next three days after, she is bound to her bed.
I have seen my mom cry not only because of this illness and the fear of leaving this earth too early, but also because the amount of bills has grown to be more than anyone can even fathom, and its only been 11 weeks.
She is not a woman to flaunt her problems, if anything, she keeps a lot of personal things inside so I decided to take the initiative of raising money.
The next steps in making sure she becomes healthy again is seeing what Northwestern Hospital says about her heart. After this, and once eventually released from the hospital, we pray that she will be accepted into the stem cell transplant program. There she will be admitted for anywhere from 2-6 weeks depending on how her body accepts it.
I ask you all, if you're at all able to help, to please do so. My brother and I could not be more appreciative and grateful for every kind soul that has prayed for my mom and her recovery.
The money is for the enormous amounts of bills and for a live-in nurse that she hopes to get when my brother and I go back to school in August. She is unmarried and the only income she once received was from herself.
Multiple Myeloma is not curable but it is treatable and helping my mom with these bills gives her the ease of focusing on going into remission.
By praying, smiling, laughing and seeing her family and friends, I know my mom will be okay and be able to see everything she planned on seeing in life.
Thank you from the bottom of my family's and my heart for your thoughts and contribution.
Organizer and beneficiary
Stephanie Gaidas
Organizer
Highland Park, IL
Joyce Jensen
Beneficiary
