Please help Christella & Family survive through her explant and surgical recovery!

First, I want to thank all of the people who generously donated to and shared Christella's Cancer fundraiser from last year! Your donations helped her put food on the table and keep a roof over her kids' heads during her time in recovery, post-mastectomy. While Christella loves doing photography, when she cannot work, she cannot earn any income, putting a much larger strain on the family's finances. Your help made it possible for us to make ends meet during the 4 months of complications post-mastectomy and reconstruction.

As many of you may know by now, Christella was diagnosed with Stage II Breast Cancer last March and underwent a bilateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction, last May, at the advisement of her cancer care team. Thankfully the breast cancer hadn't been shown to have spread to the lymph nodes, and Christella was declared N.E.D. (No evidence of Disease) following her surgery.

Despite the success of the surgery, Christella had almost immediate complications, with a large hematoma only days into recovery, which left her going back and forth to the emergency room for weeks. From there, her health continued to decline, worse than what she experienced even during active cancer. Since last May she has developed a startling number of symptoms related to what can only be deduced as Breast Implant Illness (BII), compounded by her pre-existing auto-immune condition. Breast Implant Illness can be debilitating, and has landed us in the ER again and again throughout the last year. With some serious advocating, Christella has finally been approved for an explant surgery, to have the implants removed, which has shown in other patients to alleviate the symptoms and hopefully get her back to her fun, community orientated, create self, finally!

With her explant surgery coming up very soon, I've created this fundraiser to help ease Christella's financial burden and personal struggles. She's helped so many people in her communities and extended communities, I hope to show her how much we all care about her too! As the pain and symptoms have increased, we've continued to struggle to make ends meet, with Christella's ability to work being limited more and more by her physical pain, joint pain, migraines, and other extreme symptoms of BII. Once the surgery happens, she will have to be off work for 4 to 6 weeks, for recovery, where she cannot lift more than 5lbs or raise her arms above her waist, let alone pick up a camera and get back to work.

Our goal with this fundraiser is to cover a month and a half of basic living expenses, while she heals from surgery. There are several ways you can help:

1. Donating anything you can means so much! Whether it's $5, $15 or $500, your donations all collectively go towards helping us stay housed and fed during the next couple months of recovery, as well as affording prescriptions, and necessary medical support equipment.

2. Sharing to your friends, networks, colleages, and communities! Posting a personal message about your affiliation with Christella, and sharing the link to this GoFundMe go SO FAR to helping us spread the word. Post in groups, share in comments and send in messages.

3. Donating your time! If you can't spare we understand, it's hard economic times for everyone. Help in the form of food, rides and moral support is just as valuable and helpful during this time!

Thank you, sincerely and endlessly. Times seem to be tough for just about everyone right now and we understand that! Whatever we can do to take care of each other means more than I can say. I know this means so much to Christella. We will post updates after surgery and throughout recovery.