Nafiseh needs help with husbands cancer treatment

Hi - my name is Renee Dadswell, and I am raising funds to help a co-worker so her husband can get the cancer treatment he needs in the US. It is not available in Canada. Here is their story in her words:

I am writing to seek help for my family during a challenging time. My husband was diagnosed with advanced sacral chordoma cancer on January 3, 2023, which wrapped around his mid to upper tailbone, touching his lower spinal cord. The tumor is as big as a grapefruit and is at stage four. This has made sitting excruciating for him, and he can only lie on his stomach due to the size and location of the tumour. He can only walk a few short steps or stand briefly as the tumor pushes against his nerves. Additionally, the lower part of his tailbone has fractured due to the pressure from the tumour.

Proton radiation offers his best chance for prolonging his life and has the fewest side effects, although we have been advised by our medical team that he can only have this treatment once, given the amount of scar tissue damage he may experience from the dose and number of radiation sessions. Fortunately, the OOC has agreed to pay for my husband's proton radiation at the Northwestern Medicine Proton Center in Chicago, Illinois, on February 15, 2023. As such, we need to travel from Toronto to Chicago, Illinois, sometime during the week of March 20th. (They received a phone call yesterday stating he needs to be at the hospital on March 21st to start treatment.)

Unfortunately, I need to travel with our ten-month-old baby and seven-year-old child, as I have no one to look after them for the extended period required for my husband’s treatment. My husband's treatment will last approximately 2.5 months, as of yet we do not know where we will stay in Chicago or how to get to and from appointments so we were hoping for assistance with accommodations and transportation. I had reached out to the American Cancer Society, but they informed me that we are not eligible to use their resources since we are not American citizens, and we cannot access resources in Canada since my husband's treatment is outside the country.