Kelly's Breast Cancer Support Fund

The Crabtrees are a unique tribe. Never in my life have I met a family so selfless and humble. Earlier this year, the unimaginable struck this family when Kelly was diagnosed with cancer. It is a story so familiar to all of us, either because we have lived it or know someone close to us who has.

The shock of the diagnosis. The resolve to seek treatment. The strength to recover. The weight of the financial burden. These steps should sound familiar to all of us and as we all know the financial burdens can last far longer than the cancer itself.

The Crabtrees would never be ones to ask for assistance. After a significant amount of persistence that led to annoyance, they are willing to participate in this fundraising.

I asked Aaron (Kelly’s husband) to tell me the story so that I could share it with you:

People say all the time about how their wife, or someone else is the thing that holds their family together. It’s very cliché and I have always thought that if only one person is holding things together, then someone isn’t doing enough. One person holding things together, means it is easier to fall apart. I have never been so wrong.

Kelly Beckman-Crabtree is that person holding Violet’s and my life together and without her we are lost. I don’t just mean that we need her, we are physically lost. We cannot find things; we cannot figure simple things out. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in April, she continued to do those things for us. She didn’t even think to stop.

On July 12th Kelly had a double lumpectomy at Miami Valley Hospital. After her surgery she was tired, and in pain, and unable to do those everyday things. She needed to be taken care of, and she needed us to take care of ourselves.

Taking a week off work to take care of Kelly and do her job, I felt like I was in a bad sitcom. I was not an invalid before my wife. I lived alone, bought my own food, toilet paper and did my laundry. My sheets, and kitchen might not have been as clean as they are now, but I didn’t have rats eating dinner with me at night.

But now I was a bumbling husband. Where does the cat food come from? Where are the sheets for the bed? I know they are in the hall closet, but where? It is the smallest room in our house, and I can’t find them!

Kelly provided me a list of things to do, and on what day to do them:

At first, I laughed at her list. By day two I was carrying it around the house. Along with her med schedule and drain measurements. I always appreciated and understood what she does for us, but now I appreciate the grace in which she did it. I now realize that she didn’t hold our family together, she gave us the space to hold ourselves together, and in turn hold her.

The other thing that I experienced since the surgery is how Kelly did this for others. My phone was filled with texts, and calls, asking what we needed. I told friends and family time and time again, we are okay, and we didn’t need anything. That didn’t work…

They came and called, all with stories of how Kelly had done something so much for them. It was never stories of, she brought me food, or picked up my kids for me. It was about how she gave them advice or made them laugh. How she had defended them on a Facebook post, or when said would just say “screw them, you don’t need that.”

They didn’t know how to return those small things that meant so much to them. So, they brought food, flowers, and soft hugs so they didn’t hurt her.

After a month of recovery, she is already starting to take care of us again. She is reaching out to help her friends, to be there for them, this is despite so much farther to go. She is still facing a chance of chemotherapy, and weeks of radiation after that.

Eventually after all that, one day she will wake up, and besides some scares, she will be the person she was in April before her diagnosis. She will get out of bed and do all the things she does for us, and hopefully we would have done a few things for her.

If you know the Crabtrees at all, you know they are not ones to ask for a handout. I had to assure/convince them that fundraising is not a handout, it is a hand up. We should not let medically imposed financial distress destroy everything that our friends and/or family have built for themselves.

Please help me and give what you can to help the Crabtrees pay for Kelly’s medical treatment. Any amount raised that exceeds the cost of the medical bills will be donated to the Health Well Foundation (https://www.healthwellfoundation.org/).