My name is Traci Burns and I’m writing today to ask for help for my family as we undergo my recent endometrial cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment. As many of you may know, these last few years have been especially rough on me, health-wise. In 2022 I had an episode of dangerously high blood pressure, followed weeks later by hospitalization for kidney failure for being overmedicated for the aforementioned BP issues. That took awhile to get situated, and then later in 2023, after another in a long series of doctor visits to hopefully pinpoint the cause of the severe abdominal pain I’d been having for years, my doctor discovered 4+ centimeter stones in each kidney, so I spent the end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 having 5 different surgeries to attemt to rid my body of these stones.

At that point, I was hoping desperately that my body had been taken care of and the constant pain might finally go away- but in April of 2024 I got sick with a high fever and stomach pains while simultaneously having a very heavy menstrual period for the first time in well over a year. Tests showed that I was having a severe flare up of diverticulitis, and they also showed unusual thickening of my endometrial lining. Antibiotics took care of the diverticulitis, but the endometrial biopsy I had done came back as cancer, and my gynecological oncologist has me scheduled for a complete abdominal hysterectomy on July 11. I’ll know more about my prognosis, and more about whether chemo and radiation are needed, after the surgery.

As you can imagine, this has been a lot to deal with, both personally and as a family unit. Many of you know that our 15 year old daughter Ramona is nonverbal, with profound intellectual disability and autism that falls on the severe end of the spectrum. She requires intensive 24-hour care, and as I have been sick for much of the last few years, my beloved and long-suffering (and very very cute) and devoted husband Vince has been the one to have to fill both this role and the role of being my caregiver when I’ve needed it. It’s a bit too much for one person sometimes, but that’s our life.

When I’m at my best, I love working as a freelance writer and editor, but the past few years have put that career unfortunately on the back burner for me. In addition to all the health maladies listed above, I also have serious vision issues that are worsening - I’m blind in my right eye due to degenerative myopia and have to patch that eye in order to be able to see clearly. The vision in my left eye has deteriorated to the point where I can no longer see my laptop screen, but all these other illnesses have been coming at me so rapidly that I haven’t even begun to have a chance to try to get any of that figured out.

And now we have this new cancer battle to fight. It’s a lot, but we’ve handled a lot before. Mainly, though, we are financially not doing well at all. We’ve been balancing as best we could for the past few years, but with this extended lack of work outside the home for both of us, we have used up every bit of our meager “for emergencies only” nest egg.

That’s why I’m asking you for any help you’re able to offer. We love you, we’ll be eternally grateful, we just want to all get better and feel better and be a calm peaceful happy healthy little family again. I know the next few months are going to be rough, and I’m trying to reach out so we have help available and so that I can feel less stressed and more able to rest and heal.

I love all y’all. ❤️❤️❤️