Help Gale beat the Leuks! - Leukemia AML recovery

EDIT 5/1/2024:

List below has been updated to reflect current/remaining needs!

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Hi everybody! it's Gale. I've been happily living with my partner Trey and a passel of pets in the Pittsburgh, PA, area for about ten years now. During that time, we've continued to grow our queer-owned, queer-focused small artisan business with labor and love.

But I gotta say that a diagnosis of Leukemia was not in our plans in any way - who expects cancer to come calling? - and though it's only taken up residence in my body, it's eating at far more than that - my body, our finances, our mental healths, Trey's health, and on and on.

What I want is to ease the pain of that bite, and you can help.

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So... in August or early September of 2022, things started to go kind of funny with my body, especially my ability to catch my breath and my overall strength. AKA, I suddenly didn't have any.

Ah, but I'm probably overworking myself like usual, right!? Typical Gale .....Surprise! [pulls the Scooby Doo mask off the culprit]

It was ✨✨acute (quick onset) myeloid leukemia cancer all along!✨✨

It means my bone marrow is fucking up and following my "how to make blood" recipe really wrong and as a result my blood is kinda trying to kill the rest of me.‡

The end, that's the whole story.

...Oh, don't look at me like that. You know me, long-winded under any circumstances-- the full story is posted in the campaign updates. It's so long it had to be a two-part post!

For now, let's just get this moving. Because yeah, I have cancer, but that's not what I want your help paying for and protecting.

What I want you to help me protect is my *family.*

We have some urgent things to attend to, and I'm glad to have you here to help.

‡ (I apologize to everyone who knows enough about leukemia to know how badly I am intentionally flattening parts of this explanation for humor.)

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Why a GFM?

Because, frankly, we did not have the forethought to save up a rainy day piggybank marked 

"Gale Gets Leukemia AND it's on the edge of the two biggest selling seasons in the calendar year AND she has already had to cancel two convention appearances so far AND her commission queues AND her landshark side-gig project have all now skidded to a complete halt."

How silly of us.

Like all nonsalaried workers, (hi farm workers, hi food service, hi service industry, hi contractors and repair technicians and etc) there is no such thing as paid time off or sick leave for a self-employed artist. If I'm not at my fabric work desk or my paperwork desk, I'm not making money. And I won't be even seeing those for a month, much less able to use them.

EDIT 1/1/2023: I'm still not back to work. That means I haven't been sewing at capacity since late July and haven't been sewing at all since September. That's over six months of reduced or entirely absent income.

Also! We gotta remember the very real, if statistically less probable, possibility that my treatment will not go as quickly or smoothly as it has been forecast, or as we hope, and the duration of this income absence will stretch further onward.

EDIT 1/1/2023: Yep. This did in fact happen, is happening, and will continue to happen.

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⚠️ As succinctly as I can say it: because this is not only happening to us, but is happening to us at this time of year, the direct consequences will prevent the gathering of more than a third of our 2022 annual income. 

And that number is only the back-of-hospital-napkin base figures I'm putting together here in bed, without accounting for the rollover into 2023's work time and the significnt income capture opportunities that will be lost, as I will need to spend the first half of 2023 recovering and rebuilding myself and my strength after my hospital treatments are completed. ⚠️

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On top of lost income, it turns out this leukemia thing is kinda expensive! Huh.

Just one week into my hospitalization journey, we already felt the acute effects of the new expenses it was causing us, and in the time since then, both the acute and long term pains have persisted and increased.

There's different kinds of expenses, and Go Fund Me is best at gathering money for monetary expenses. And believe us, we have soooooo much of that, so, yanno, if that's what you're in the mood for....go for it, please.

But there's other ways to help too, and I want to spend some space here asking for you to spend for us with your time, if you have it and can afford it. Cause time IS money, a valuable commodity in its own right, especially appreciated by a very stressed, harried, scared threepack of artists and their existentially baffled dogs who cannot for the life of them figure out WHERE Papa and Dad have hidden Mom, but they aren't giving her back!???

Not for a long time, kiddos, sorry.

EDIT 1/1/2023: the dogs and cats were SO HAPPY to have me back after my initial month of chemotherapy inpatient stay. They continue to be furious every time I disappear for one of my subsequent week-long consolidation chemo stays.

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"Okay, Gale, shut up and tell us how to HELP."

You asked, I brainstormed, and here's some ideas on how to help us! ️ 

• ⚠️Please know, from the bottom of our hearts, that assistance with ANY item on this list would be a boon and an aid, a way to lift pressure off of us. ❤️

On to the list!

➡️➡️IF YOU ARE:

✈️ any distance, can spend money: 

Please, do! There is so much to spend it on and so much less income with which to pay for it all. I've itemized some of the new impacts my illness has put on us which you would be helping to cushion for us:

EXPENSES:

‍⛽ --our gas budget, parking garage fees, & car maintenance & protection

Shadyside is an amazing hospital and I'm lucky to have a facility like this available for my care. But whoo, the commutes are a beast - 50 minutes each way. Thankfully, the Heritage Valley hospital where I get my transfusions is closer than Shadyside, but still requires a significant drive. So our gas expenses are fucking huge now.

ALSO. Maybe easiest to overlook in the short term, but most important in the long term - we are a one-vehicle family. Our van which we're putting this sudden influx of miles onto is the van that gets us to conventions to make money. If anything happens to her, we will be in *trouble.* So I want to have the funds to buy the maintenance services she needs, and keep up with them. It's easy to put off getting those things done when there's more immediate expenses on hand, but the long term effect of pushing it off too far could be *disastrous*. I want to have enough money on hand so we don't have to make that choice.

INCOME:

--absorbing a BIG projected income drop

EDIT 1/1/2023: oh, I had *no idea* how bad it was gonna be. You guys, it's so fucking bad. We have lost so much income. And it just keeps going.

There are so many products and product lines we can't currently restock into our Etsy shop. It's because only I can make them, and I am not in a condition to reliably make anything. And of course, they include many of our bestsellers: Paopu, Creeper Hoods, Toothless Hoods, Plaidypi, Pride Pals.

☠️ We had to take the popular, trending items off the shelf right before two big holiday seasons (Halloween and Christmas). We took a big hit from not being able to offer them.

And coming up next is Valentine's season, in which Paopu are by far our biggest seller and I'm the only one who can make them. It is gonna be UGLY. And by ugly I mean "there is no physical way I can provide enough product to meet the demand and that's going to leave SO MUCH money on the table and get our 2023 income off to a horribly weak start." ☠️ Also I'm going to be IN the hospital for that week! So there's not going to be any last minute sewing possible.

Okay guys, that's what I've got for you for now!

If you'd like to read more, there are many more updates posted in our campaign, and I do my best to continue to keep posting and keep you all up to date, including all the gorey details about what I experience as this whole dumb illness developed and as our journey with it continues.

If you'd like to comment to me or ask me questions, I crosspost most GFM updates to my Facebook, where the comments are globally open. https://www.facebook.com/NightengaleEmily

with love and gratitude,

Gale

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