Financial Assistance & Healing for Gina Artruc

Hi everyone, my name is Samantha Eck and I am starting this fundraiser for one of the most wonderful, compassionate, empathetic, and humble humans this world has ever known - my dear friend Gina Artruc (McFarlane).

On April 5, 2021, Gina woke up to get ready for work like any other day before. Only that morning, she went in to a coughing fit which turned in to hemoptysis (coughing up blood from her lungs). After a trip to the ER, follow-up visits to pulmonary medicine, and eventually a PET scan, doctors confirmed Gina has Small Cell Carcinoma (lung cancer), and a long road ahead of her.

In just 3 weeks, Gina will be starting a radiation and chemotherapy combination treatment. She will receive 3 chemo treatments per week (every 4 weeks) and radiation 5 days/week for 7 weeks.

As a wife to Karin of 6 years (together for 20 years), and a mother to 3, Gina is giving everything she has to continue building a future and making memories with her loved ones. She has been put on a very specific diet (all organic, non-gmo, gluten-free, dairy-free, as well as no processed foods or vinegar) to help build her immune system to fight this cancer, which doesn't come cheap. She also requires supplements and homeopathic remedies to keep her airways open in lieu of albuterol (inhaler) which can raise her heartrate too high and cause additional damage.

Gina's wife Karin works full-time and has been the sole source of income for their household, and the family has been struggling with financial hardship. No one should have to choose between medicine and partially filling their oil tank to heat their home. There are also mortgage payments, house bills, additional medical bills, and some seriously needed home repairs that have been put on hold as they navigate from one day to the next.

For almost 20 years, Gina has dedicated her time to healing others through Reiki and massage therapy. She most recently used her passion to teach students in West Hartford from 2018-2021. If you met her students, you could see the devotion and excitement she brought to the classroom and those she prepared to bring this healing out in to the world. Gina brings so much beauty, joy, and love to everyone she meets and cares about others in a way that can never be put in to words.

Please join me in donating to help Gina, Karin, and family get through this unimaginable time and take some of the financial burden and added stress off of their shoulders so Gina can focus on treatment and healing. As Gina says, "The moment we are in is the only time we are promised," - so please help in giving her and her family as many of these moments as we possibly can.