Donate to Ease Mom's Pain and Aid Recovery

Our family and I would like to express our deepest gratitude to all of you who have continued to check in with kind words and best wishes for Mom since she’s been in the hospital. Your support has been a great source of comfort and strength to her.

Mom has stage 4 cancer that started as a large liposarcoma mass in one of her thighs and eventually managed to travel through the bloodstream to one of her lungs (even after undergoing surgery for the tumor which at the time was believed to have been successfully extracted).

Several months ago, she started to feel a very sharp, intense pain in her hip that eventually also covered her whole waist and back. More recently, she began to experience a sudden weakness and loss of balance in her legs that lasted several days. Then last week, out of the blue, she lost complete control and sensation of both legs and had to be hospitalized.

At first, they believed the most rational explanation was that these new symptoms were most likely indicative of the cancer spreading even further into her spinal cord but after running multiple tests this week it was determined that it’s actually not a tumor. In layman’s terms—there’s a quite severe, very dangerous infection between two of her vertebrae (Vertebral osteomyelitis) which has created a large abscess that has produced enough pressure to cut off all function in her legs; and due to the length of time this infection has resided there, the doctors believe the chances of her legs recovering even after surgery and treatment are sadly very low. With that said, she’s been scheduled for surgery this Tuesday, May 20th with the objective of eliminating or, at the very least, significantly decreasing the back pain this infection has been causing. Not to mention, it could absolutely paralyze the rest of her body and eventually kill her if left untreated.

My sister Lemar flew down there to take care of her a couple of weeks ago; I did the same the following week and stayed with her at the hospital (until yesterday); and our other sister Lida is with her on a regular basis as she's the only sibling who still lives in Puerto Rico.

Once again, your support has meant a great deal, more than words can say. Should you want to send her words of encouragement and support though, we do kindly ask that you do so through social media instead of phone calls and texts until further notice (she might not be able to get back to you all that soon but at least they’ll be there waiting for her once she can). She needs to focus on her recovery, and we wish to respect her privacy and provide her with a calm environment.

We will keep you updated on her progress and hope to share better news with you soon.

Much love ♥️❤️‍