For several months now, the Hindman/Stanley/Buford family has been walking through a time of fear, struggle, and pain. Dawn (my big sister) is a beautiful forty-four-year-old woman who was diagnosed with Metastatic Breast and Bone Cancer. Dawn heads our family, a crazy blend of two and four-legged misfits, all the two-leggers of which have desperate health issues that Dawn helps manage for all of us.

My big sister saved my life many years ago and has kept me alive since. I started calling her my Barracuda because she would bust through all barriers that could have taken my life, but now Dawn needs her own barracudas.

Dawn’s care is at the University of Virginia, as is mine, and some of the rest of us. She was in a fishbowl here in the Roanoke cancer care system. Her care team chose UVA to give her a better quality of life and more options to help her fight this demon. Travel expenses, copays, and medications that aren’t covered are what she needs the most help with. UVA is two hours away, causing Dawn Nicole to stay local to the hospital often for treatment and various other medical reasons.

Our family is going through a lot right now. We have to move and cannot find a place that can accommodate all of us. With me being paralyzed and needing twenty-four-hour care, it has become almost impossible. Now Dawn’s cancer has been diagnosed as Stage IV and she is facing radiation starting in just a week or two. She will be leaving her family in Salem next week and going to Charlottesville for two weeks with her constant companion and caregiver, Lauch for her first radiation sequence .

We are in desperate need of financial assistance for them to have the ability to stay so far away from home. We also need to raise money to continue her chemotherapy. She will be on this care plan of chemo every three weeks for the rest of her life. She is being told she is incurable and there is no hope of remission for her type of cancer. Dawn is scared, not so much for herself (that’s for those of us that love her) but for her family and what she’ll leave behind. Our God is in control.

On top of the money she needs within the week to get her radiation, Dawn also has to raise at least $3,000 every month for the Ibrance medication starting at the beginning of the year. Ibrance and Phesgo are two chemotherapy medications that Dawn will need to stay on for the rest of her life to fight this monster that can take her away from us.

Dawn is a woman that gives of her soul to everyone she meets. We learn more so now every day than we ever have to love and hold tight to every minute we have with her and with each

As a family, we know that God is MIGHTY!! Our faith is stronger than our fear!