Ease the Burden for Jana Papazian's Family

Dear Friends,

On Sunday, January 13th, Jana Papazian passed away after a fierce battle with cancer.  Those who knew her admire the enduring strength and positivity she maintained throughout. Her biggest concern, even in the midst of pain and exhaustion, was that her family would be ok. 

To know Jana is to understand how close she was to her family, and how deeply they cared for her.  Over the course of her illness her husband Rick, daughter Jessica, and granddaughter Lana were by her side, providing unending support and encouragement. 


I’ve started this campaign for my dear friend Jess and her father Rick, in hope that as they wade through this grief, we can lift them up by helping with some of the financial stress that comes from a lengthy medical struggle.

Expenses
Even with insurance, the financial impact on the family has been significant. Costs have been accumulating since 2016 for operations, radiation treatments, chemotherapy, immunotherapy and various other procedures.  Along with these, Jana needed constantly changing prescriptions, with co-pays anywhere from $120-$300 per month, many pairs of prescriptions glasses as her vision changed, home medical equipment and countless trips to and from Columbia Presbyterian.

Over the last few months, Jess stopped working in order to care for her mother full time.  For a freelancer this means no income at all -- an almost impossible situation to be in.  

Let’s do what we can to help ease the financial burden that comes with this tragedy.

Any amount you are able to give - whether its $5 or $50 - will be deeply appreciated and honor Jana's memory.  

Jess and Rick will have immediate access to the donations and will use them to cover outstanding bills related to Jana's illness and end of life costs.

With love and many thanks,
-Tracy Crim

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Jana never wanted people to worry, and didn’t widely share details of her illness.  Jess has provided a summary of how things progressed for those of you who wish to know:

Time went so fast sometimes then so slow at other times. It was three years ago, in Jan of 2016, she had a polyp removed from her vocal chords. Then in the Fall she had 30 hyperbaric oxygen treatments. She thought she had bad allergies that were causing her voice to sound strange and coughing, then she started having trouble breathing and it continued to get worse. It turned out to be malignant. She had 35 radiation treatments that Spring. This caused severe pain and the cancer came back more aggressively almost exactly a year later. She had an emergency laryngectomy in Feb of 2017. They removed her voice box to be able to remove as much cancer as possible. She then started chemo and had another 37 radiation treatments, April and May of 2018, followed by 30 hyperbaric oxygen treatments. The first two chemo treatments had absolutely horrible side effects and not till the third one were the side effects somewhat bearable. Unfortunately none of these treatments were successful. She then started immunotherapy in Oct of 2018 and recently started on her third round of radiation this past Thursday, after having yet another procedure to try to open her airway more so she wasn’t struggling to breathe. It seemed to be noticeably and significantly helpful right away, as they finally were able to put a stint in to open her airway. But soon after, pain and swelling started, as expected, and radiation treatments started almost immediately as well, so she was so so exhausted and the pain had worn her down so much.

I can’t even begin to imagine how she actually felt, physically and mentally at this point.  She’s resting now finally ♥