Olga & Alex’s Battle with Brain & Gastric Cancer

Hi Everyone,

I am organizing this on behalf of my best friend, Mariya, and her parents, in an effort to help alleviate some of the tremendous expenses that go hand in hand with two cancer diagnoses. Mariya’s mother and father have both received terminal cancer diagnoses just one year apart from each other. Her mother, Olga, has glioblastoma and her father, Alex, has gastric cancer.

This special family needs us to lift them up during this unimaginably difficult time.

Mariya has been required to stay home to assist them both with their basic daily tasks such as showering, changing, and dressing. Unfortunately, their health insurance does not cover a home health aide. Mariya will very soon need to return to work or risk losing her job. The money raised here would go toward hiring full time help for them so that she can go back to work knowing that her parents are being cared for.

In early 2021, Olga had a fall after taking her evening walk and was rushed to the emergency room. After many tests, she was diagnosed with multiple inoperable glioblastomas (brain cancer). She is now homebound, no longer able to dress or bathe herself, prepare her own food, or move around without assistance. Olga’s cognitive decline paired with a steep decline in her physical mobility requires around the clock care. Her husband, Alex, left his job as a pipe fitter to be her caretaker. He is a wonderful husband who wanted to be the one to care for his sick wife and refused help of any kind up until now when he can longer do it on his own.

Olga’s treatment started with radiation followed by chemotherapy. During her treatment, she had a very rare adverse reaction to a chemotherapy drug treatment (Temodar) that affects only 3% of patients that caused her platelets to drop to as low as 8. A normal platelet count is 160-400 K/mcL. This resulted in her needing over 12 platelet transfusions at the hospital just within one month.

There are many days when Olga cannot walk, stand up, or hold herself up, even with assistance and requires a wheelchair to get around. The constant heartache and ups and downs of her treatment had also taken a toll on Alex. Only one year later, he began having stomach pain. After seeing a doctor, he was diagnosed with an ulcer and gastroparesis. Several months later, he became unable to eat solid food and was rushed to the emergency room with horrible stomach pains. He was hospitalized for a month during which he contracted coronavirus. Ultimately, he was diagnosed with Stage 3 gastric cancer. With him being hospitalized and then returning home with a treatment plan of his own, Mariya has had to become the full time caretaker for them both.

Alex will undergo several rounds of chemotherapy and surgery to hopefully diminish the tumor in his stomach. He currently has a feeding tube that allows him to get the nutrition he needs to have enough energy to physically stand up and move around.

Over the next couple of years, Mariya and her husband Ricardo will be the ones overseeing their care. All of this rests on their shoulders alone. Assuming they are able to hire help, Mariya will still be out of work on and off to take both parents to all of their doctor appointments and help at home.

Alex and Olga are a wonderful, loving and generous couple. They are always happy, dancing and laughing at home together. They continue to enjoy spending as much time together as possible though their entire lives have been turned completely upside down. Olga was herself once a home health aide for over 15 years, selflessly and lovingly caring for her patients. She and her husband are now in need of this kind of care and with your help we can help them get it.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Any small gift would be tremendously appreciated.