Ginger's End of Life Expenses
Donation protected
In December of 2013, Ginger Cywinski began experiencing numbness on the right side of her body. She had been plagued with bad headaches and charlie horses in the middle of the night so painful they would wake her up so she sought medical treatment to find out what was going on. She was terrified she would be told she had cancer and die in less than a year like a friend of hers had the year before.
The doctors discovered four tumors in her brain. They searched her entire body to rule out other types of cancer, even going so far as to remove her nail polish and check for cancer there. Finally they ruled out any other type of cancer and performed a biopsy on the largest of the tumors that was located in the motor skills portion of the brain. This was the tumor causing the numbness.
On January 27, 2014, Ginger Cywinski was diagnosed with glioblastoma brain cancer at the age of 43. Due to the location of the tumors, surgery was never an option. It was determined later that just doing the biopsy had likely caused a stroke that was never treated.
After her biopsy Ginger was left with extreme weakness on the right side of her body that left her wheel chair bound and dependent on others. For a woman as strong and independent as her this was hell.
Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer there are. It is very hard to treat, treatment will buy victims time, but not a cure. It just keeps coming back. She was told that only 50% of people diagnosed with it will be lucky enough to get up to five years but that all people diagnosed with this cancer die sooner rather than later. There are zero survivors.
When Ginger was 15, she lost her mother to breast cancer. She saw the ravages of chemotherapy first hand and had to watch cancer steal the life from her mother. She knew what chemotherapy did to someone.
Ginger went through radiation treatment with the chemotherapy pills in spite of this. She truly believed that God would give her a miracle. Some would have given up on God in this situation but like her mother before her, Ginger truly believed God had this happen to her for a reason. For a while the tumors stopped growing.
However she took a turn for the worse in late June and as is the case with victims of this form of cancer, she declined rapidly. Up until this time she had been living in Louisiana with her boyfriend of fourteen years, Denny. She made a choice to relocate to Dayton, OH to be closer to her daughters, grandsons as well as longtime friends and family as she neared the end of her life.
Prior to being diagnosed, Ginger was working part-time as a payroll clerk for the Arc of Baton Rouge, a non-profit organization that assists people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for about two years. She had just been promoted to full-time shortly before this happened. Unfortunately this meant that she did not have health insurance, life insurance or anything saved for end of life costs. She was only 43, she wasn't expecting she would die.
Please assist us in honoring Ginger Cywinski and laying her to rest with dignity. We have set the goal for $10,000 because we have been told that that is what end of life costs can run between $6,000 to $15,000. Any and all donations are truly and deeply appreciated. Any funds raised will go towards funeral/memorial/burial costs.
The doctors discovered four tumors in her brain. They searched her entire body to rule out other types of cancer, even going so far as to remove her nail polish and check for cancer there. Finally they ruled out any other type of cancer and performed a biopsy on the largest of the tumors that was located in the motor skills portion of the brain. This was the tumor causing the numbness.
On January 27, 2014, Ginger Cywinski was diagnosed with glioblastoma brain cancer at the age of 43. Due to the location of the tumors, surgery was never an option. It was determined later that just doing the biopsy had likely caused a stroke that was never treated.
After her biopsy Ginger was left with extreme weakness on the right side of her body that left her wheel chair bound and dependent on others. For a woman as strong and independent as her this was hell.
Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer there are. It is very hard to treat, treatment will buy victims time, but not a cure. It just keeps coming back. She was told that only 50% of people diagnosed with it will be lucky enough to get up to five years but that all people diagnosed with this cancer die sooner rather than later. There are zero survivors.
When Ginger was 15, she lost her mother to breast cancer. She saw the ravages of chemotherapy first hand and had to watch cancer steal the life from her mother. She knew what chemotherapy did to someone.
Ginger went through radiation treatment with the chemotherapy pills in spite of this. She truly believed that God would give her a miracle. Some would have given up on God in this situation but like her mother before her, Ginger truly believed God had this happen to her for a reason. For a while the tumors stopped growing.
However she took a turn for the worse in late June and as is the case with victims of this form of cancer, she declined rapidly. Up until this time she had been living in Louisiana with her boyfriend of fourteen years, Denny. She made a choice to relocate to Dayton, OH to be closer to her daughters, grandsons as well as longtime friends and family as she neared the end of her life.
Prior to being diagnosed, Ginger was working part-time as a payroll clerk for the Arc of Baton Rouge, a non-profit organization that assists people with intellectual and developmental disabilities for about two years. She had just been promoted to full-time shortly before this happened. Unfortunately this meant that she did not have health insurance, life insurance or anything saved for end of life costs. She was only 43, she wasn't expecting she would die.
Please assist us in honoring Ginger Cywinski and laying her to rest with dignity. We have set the goal for $10,000 because we have been told that that is what end of life costs can run between $6,000 to $15,000. Any and all donations are truly and deeply appreciated. Any funds raised will go towards funeral/memorial/burial costs.
Organizer
Kathryn Basden
Organizer
Dayton, OH
