Hello, Yvette Margot Mendoza here and this is a long one. We are having a very hard time right now and as many of you may know It’s been a long journey and I’m still navigating this metastatic breast cancer journey after another recent recurrence to the brain was discovered after having to have my baby early at 34 weeks on July 3rd 2022. I needed to have more extensive scans on my brain that I wasn’t able to have while pregnant and in addition to that the doctors also realized that our baby needed a surgery to his intestines because of the mal rotation of his intestines would not allow him to feed or digest food properly and this is common with babies with down syndrome which was also a condition he was diagnosed with as well. My new husband since April 2022 and the love of my life Tyrone and I decided to name our miracle baby boy Aaron because it means strong, and he is a very very strong little baby. We gave him the middle name Calvin after my late father as he passed in 1998 from bladder cancer and we wanted to honor his memory also. Prior to meeting my current husband I first started dealing with metastatic breast cancer in July 2019 while simultaneously going through a very volatile divorce and it was beyond hard and lonely. But now this is the third time I’m fighting this after the first recurrence was January 2021. That is when I went through craniotomy surgery and radiation back then and Tyrone and I became an official couple. Fast forward to Nov 2021 my then fiancé Tyrone and I not even realizing I could even get pregnant anymore after hard chemo I was on we realized I was pregnant, 2 months after becoming engaged, in November 2021 and we knew this little baby was meant to be and wanted to be alive.

I came off my medications immediately that was the maintenance medications to keep the cancer at bay when I found out that I was pregnant. One week after I had an emergency c-section I had to start two weeks or 10 weekdays of radiation on my brain and then little Aaron had his first of now two surgeries on his intestines 4 days after birth. The side effects from the radiation I had and now also just having started back my every 3 weeks infusion treatments and oral chemo pills have caused me to have a lot of very difficult side effects from blurred vision, dizziness, muscle pain, joint pains, severe fatigue, brain fog, just to name the main ones. It is a challenge to focus, think and see properly but I keep pushing through for myself, and for my family. In addition, my lymphedema in my right arm flared up and neuropathy in my right fingers are making it difficult to hold and do things and I’m even having a hard time just writing this up with all these side effects. But I know that through all of this God continues to give me the strength and the fortitude I need to keep going, but on some days all I want to do is sleep all day. My two older son’s Caleb 9 and Jacob 6 are frustrated but also understanding that they aren’t able to meet their little brother yet because he is still in the NICU and children aren’t allowed to visit. The second surgery Aaron had to further correct more issues in his smaller intestines now was Aug 10, 2022. As of now he is still living in the hospital in the NICU since his birth and recovering more every day until he can digest properly.

Since all of this has been going on my supportive, loving and amazing husband had no choice but to close his video game store because it was not feasible for him to keep up the store and help me in my state and be there for everything going on with the baby and all the responsibilities he has. We prayed about all of this and decided that doing this go fund me until we figure things out better was the way to go because things are very challenging for us right now financially. Metastatic Breast Cancer in and of it’s self is a chronic illness with no known cure right now and the best options right now are I have to remain on medication for life to try to extend my life as long as possible and keep the cancer at bay to keep the cells from forming back into tumors. I have another brain mri in September to see how the last radiation worked and we are praying that it got it all out for good! I am a woman of faith and I know and trust that God can and will turn all this around for myself and our little strong baby Aaron Calvin as we navigate his digestive issues and down syndrome diagnosis and continue to navigate my metastatic breast cancer as a family. I’m so grateful to anyone that can bless us during this difficult time in our lives and I know that there are brighter days to come in our future because God didn’t take us this far to just leave us now. Any little amount would be a blessing and always the prayers are everything because we feel them working. Thank you for your time, prayers and blessings.