Save Mark James

SAVE MARK JAMES

The Artist, Musician, Meditation coach, and Survivor of a full-body cancer that was named after him.

THIS FUNDRAISER IS FOR: Funding the Procedures and medications Mark James needs to be able to live! The most important is a Testosterone procedure called AVEED that will cost $2000 a month, which is $24,000 a year. But he also needs another called PTNS that costs $200 a week $11 thousand a year and a few meds his doctors say he needs but can't get because pills that cost hundreds for each tablet. These costs are sky high and even as an entire family, we have no way to fund this kind of treatment. But Mark is absolutely miserable every single day.

Now, as things have progressed, his illnesses and side effects from them and his knockoff brand meds have gotten so bad, that he has barely eaten anything for the past year and a half.

You can help fund the procedures, equipment and medications that the artist and cancer survivor Mark James needs to live. And the independence he needs to live well.

What he needs the most is an expensive procedure done once every month or so in order to replace the Testosterone his body doesn't produce anymore. Right now Mark is unable to even eat without it. And his current treatment has a risk of heart attack as well as his daily life is miserable because of the peaks and valleys a weekly shot gives him.

Without these shots, Mark will die in just a matter of weeks and he is living with that daily. He has many other medical needs that have consumed his life by not having solutions due to finance. Something so close, able to ease your pain. Just out of reach. Because of something like charging massive amounts of money for just one of any single thing he needs and being left to live on disability from the illnesses that caused the need for expensive solutions has been an unbearable weight on all of our hearts. Mark sits alone, wishing he were able to have the energy to live again! And with this procedure called Aveed, he may be able to get just that! And not have to live with this horrible method of Testosterone Replacement!

So Mark hasn't known what to do and we as a family don't exactly know what to do either... Life after Cancer for Mark was okay at first and then started to get worse... and worse... Less able to walk... Less able to eat... He eats once a day if he's lucky he says. Because so many thing including the meds he stays by all day, are helping and causing Mark more issues. And half of them are things we can fight to have be better versions of so he wont have so many side effects! But it costs insane amounts of money, everything we need is not covered by insurance or any other way and because Mark can't walk without great pain and even his mind is going because of the stress and is forced to live on disability, and this procedure will give him the energy he needs even mentally and emotionally again due to it balancing his endocrine with testosterone that he can't produce anymore and can't keep giving himself shots of.

Mark Can only give himself these shots for so long before he has a heart attack.

That's what the our research and physicians have us believe when we search the thing he has been on. And he says his heart hurts.

That is the main thing Mark needs, it costs thousands a month and unfortunately needs it for the rest of his life. But it's better than what he has now by far and the procedure is coming up soon! In December!

And to afford it, we really need your help! Even a dollar would be wonderful! Even a share goes a long way!

Who lost his T11spine, knees, teeth, Sanity, energy, and has nearly lost his ability to even eat.

But most importantly he lost his ability to produce Testosterone, Cortisol, and Vitamin D.

But he has lost so much more in life because of this horrid, unknown cancer. It had no treatment... And had to sign away his lfie to be experimented on to try new chemos. We were all in shock!

The experiments the doctors did on him in this horrible place they called the dungeon, resulted in Mark dying... And somehow coming back to life every time... This happened over 4 times! Miracles like this happened so often with Mark that even The head physicians of Hopkins refer to him as "The Anomaly".

But though he may live somehow, he doesn't live well.. He's constantly in pain. And we've always been told his insurance won't cover what he needs.

Mark James

Can hardly eat, walk, or sleep. And must take meds around the clock. Every day. Unable to go anywhere often... No car anymore due to lack of funding during the past few years. So we now are turning to you for help so that, hopefully, this page reaches far and wide with sharing. Despite being so embarrassed to show how bad things are and to ask for help from anyone!

Mark is living most days at home in critical condition right now. With only very seldom days that he feels just ok.. On those days he wants to film his hobbies. But is finding stress and fincance stops him at every turn!

But with your help, Even just sharing this could create a more significant change than we may ever know!

 Please help in any way you can!

 Mark keeps saying he thinks this is the last of his days. And struggling to eat and all those blood-curdling cries.. knowing these meds we can't afford could help him is destroying him as he feels abandoned by his healthcare. And he never truly a chance to either go to school, or get to express many of his incredible talents for the world. But he still wishes to! And needs your help!

He really wants to express himself through his art but...

For the past ten years, Mark has been given improper medications and has been told what will genuinely help is too expensive. So now, chronically fighting for any amount of time to feel good, and fed up with this terrible medical system, we have turned to all of you kind people here at Gofundme and wish to ask if you too can help make the next ten years of Mark's life happy!

=Fund AVEED; the only Testosterone Replacement Therapy Mark hasn't tried. It is going to cost us around $2,000 a month == So up to $24,000 a year

=New Dentures; The ones he has are so misshaped they cut his gums, making them bleed and sore for days after wearing them. To look normal whenever going out and feels like an outcast. Dentures cost=max $10k once.

=For weekly Post Tibial Nervous Stimulation =$200 a week so $10,400 a year

=High end Health Equipment for body and home. =highly varied prices.

=Meds we can't afford. Some are over a $100 a pill. Every month. (Some meds, insurance used to cover and now won't. And Mark has been suffering so badly because of that. Even this past week he's been throwing up and doesn't get his Kytril anymore. The only thing that worked for his nausea.

=Funding for basic his basic survival needs as he can not live on Disability money.

=Mark has big dreams to be the award winning artist and musician he use to be. But now finds most equipment too expensive. Not to mention our family is 50 thousand dollars in debt. And Mark is terribly depressed due to causing this to happen with his treatment and his mother losing her job for several years to stay by his side.

Mark barely survived living years in the hospital with untreatable unknown cancers and illnesses given to him for life by all the experiments they subjected him to... He showed incredible bravery to even keep his will to live! 

But when nothing works, you need a BMT. But the bone marrow transplants failed and the unbeatable cancer lived! Letting the body attack itself till the cancer was gone was a barbaric stunt Mark says is far worse than cancer or chemo. But the cancer kept coming back. Relapsing every year for almost a decade. Even after 100 rounds of radiation. It kept comint back. 

Till one day it didn't! But it left him unable to produce Testosterone, Vitamin D, and natural Cortisol Steroid. His life is totally dpendant on these and more just to live. But Mark is miserable and in a world of pain all day every day..

Hes tried every method until finding AVEED

Funding for Testosterone Replacement Therapy Injection known as AVEED. It costs up to $2000 a month

 Or 24,000 a year.

Funding for weekly procedures of PTNS to stablize Mark's nervous system. He can't even use the bathroom well because inscurance stopped covering this.

For that it's $200 a week, So around $12,000 a year

Mark James whom barely survived an unknown terminal cancer be able to afford the treatments hes been denied for years by the inscursnce

This is Markj...And only a year after highschool Mark suffered Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) and the steroids prescribed to help him, ended up leaving all his joints with osteonecrosis that forever will be eating away at his bones and never ending pain till this very day. Crippling him for life...

Learning only recently that level of steroids werent even necessary.

But then. A year later

The cancer fused with a Cancer never before seen in anywhere but Cats and Dogs attacked him. Cancer that is unique and named after him. 

While being misdiagnosed and mistreated, One of the 18 tumors of his unique full body cancer crushed the center of his spine...and they fused the T11 together after removing. Mark thought he was just getting his lungs checked. But when he woke up. His spine was leaking blood into a tube. And he couldnt move a single muscle from the the waist down

3 months later was able to stand on his own with a walker  

Rung this bell around 5 times...

This is what it looks like when you let your body fight itself ... Graft versus Tumor. 6 months intravenously fed.

What does SURVIVAL really Mean ?

BROKEN

When surviving cancer leaves you broken, disabled and unable to provide for yourself.

Forever dependent, or can you humble yourself and ask for help?

Starting at age 18, two cancers at the same time, ALL and Histiocytic Sarcoma. Enduring an allogeneic bone marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins, the cancer still thrived. Therefore, the only course was to have the body reject itself to combat the cancer, also known as Graft vs. histiocytic lymphoma (GVHT) and little had been known on the efficacy of allogeneic transplant even at Johns Hopkins. This was their first encounter. This battle was seven years of chemo and radiation, then on with replacing the joints they damaged in the high doses of steroids.

Now leaving him with complicated graft-versus-host disease, chronic, complicating bone marrow transplant and as well as radiation to all the tumors that continued to grow. 19 of them in all, one tumor crushing his spinal cord and they removed the tumor on his T11 and fused his spine and left paralyzed for 3 months and then another 3 months to learn to walk again, thanking God for that miracle. He was given 3 months to live, and he survived. But there was indeed a price to pay for this course of treatment.

TODAY .... this is what he's now left with more that can be written but some of what Mark deals with every day include:

All of the above, and adrenal insufficiency, pancreatic insufficiency, edentulous, testosterone deficiency, functional asplenia, polycythemia and avascular necrosis of hips, knees, and ankles. And so much more! His left hip and both knees were replaced and the osteonecrosis ate the bone around the titanium.. he lives in excruciating pain! His Ankles habe collapsed and scientists say they don't know how he's able to walk.. Then there is the extreme chronic fatigue, generalized anxiety, depression and PTSD from his ongoing long term battle with cancers that his althletic healthy body suddenly got at age 18. Never to run again, or have children or support himself. The enormous amount of medication to take daily has left his quality of life and purpose in constant question. Will the cancer return again as it did every year for so long? The fatigue and pain is too great to accomplish even the smallest of tasks. Yet he pushes himself so hard he collapses just trying to clean his room.

Living with his 66yr old mother whom is slowly losing her memory and struggling to provide him the help he needs. Unable to provide for himself he relies on his mother and sister for help as he is usually too crippled in pain and side effects to even so much as eat.. which he does by painfully mashing his gums.

Yet Mark still has big dreams of making great videos, music, and works of art. As well as continue his dream of traveling to compete in an old game called Melee that he wishes he could still train every day on. But How can he when he can't survive with disability money only reaching $840 a month. Which at least is up from the $600 it was for 15 years...Without his mother he will be shuffled from one foster care to the next. In his 30s... unless we can pull together enough for him to live and thrive on! Mark can't afford to stay alive. Or to achieve his dreams.

Mark just wants to get back to his artwork and his friends.. He only feels up to it for a moment or two a day and stares in envy of others health. Mark doesn't have the energy to do a lot of the things he is able to do. And he says "I'm getting too old to not get to live comfortably, and able to express myself. I have too many talents to let myself wither away when there are procedures and medications that could save me if only I can afford them". I need these procedures, especially Aveed. I just can't believe it costs so much just to be able to live a little better". At all... So our ultimate goal is to be able to finally afford the medications that Mark has had to unjustly go without for all these years!