Help Cat with Bills During her ✨Cancer Era✨

Hi! I’m Cat. I’m a single mother to a wonderful 10 year old and I’ve been unemployed for over a year, and now all my savings and retirement are gone.

My daughter and I both have a genetic condition called Common Variable Immunodeficiency. This is a condition where we don’t make antibodies. We both undergo monthly IVIG treatments that need to be accommodated, as well as the time needed for doctor’s appointments and our many illnesses. This has made things hard to job hunt.

To top it all off, i have spent the better part of the last two years under surveillance for lymphoma. In the spring of 2022 a set of chest X-rays showed that the lymph nodes and spleen were all enlarged. This led to a massive series of procedures looking for lymphoma, all of which came back saying “Not yet, but keep an eye on it.”

Then things got interesting.

I had been having abdominal pain for years, and in October of 2023 it got really bad. I had an ultrasound where we discovered that my spleen was enormous. An organ that’s supposed to be the size of your fist is roughly the size of a football. We decided to take a wait-and-see approach on it, until April of 2024 when the pain was so bad I couldn’t breathe, resulting in a 10-day hospitalization to repeat all the lymphoma procedures, that said the same thing as the set I had in 2022.

But it doesn’t rule out the rare possibility that the cancer is in my spleen itself.

The organ has grown enough that it’s interfering with the rest of my organs. It is engulfing my stomach so it can’t expand. I’ve lost 20 lbs in short order. My bowels are regularly blocked unless I’m laying down. My heart is literally in the wrong place.

I had surgery in January 2025 to remove the spleen and a nearby lymph node, which pathology reports showed contained follicular lymphoma. They also found it in one of the lymph nodes they took out in 2023. This, combined with the mess my PET scans are, will likely mean I’m in Stage 3 cancer. I’m still waiting for my hematology appointment for more information.

I have still been job hunting, but the surgery, and now this cancer, has made it hard, and I don’t know if I will be able to work for a while. I need help with things until I can either get a job or get my ducks in a row to go on disability. Money raised will help towards rent, electricity, gas, internet, and my car payment and insurance. It will also help me take my daughter out for pizza after her IVIG infusions.