Georgie's Cancer Fighting Funds

My name is Georgie Rose. I’m a 24 year old legally blind trans woman from Wisconsin and I was recently diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic melanoma. The cancer is very aggressive and has already begun to spread. I started to get sick often in the summer, and had noticed a small mass in my neck. I had increased “flu-like” symptoms, which continued to worsen in time. From the summer time till now I have lost around 50 pounds, with it becoming increasingly difficult to maintain my weight. In December I noticed the lump had begun to grow more rapidly, and began to feel constantly ill. I have been unable to work my full schedule since then. Officially I have not worked since February, before surgery happened. From then up until now we have run countless tests and scans. The issue with this cancer being so aggressive is that in the time from when I had surgery and when I had my first repeat scan (about 3 weeks), cancer has formed 3 new for sure cancerous tumors in my lymph nodes. On most recent scans it showed a possible spread to my hip bone and 2 large spots with 5 tiny spots on my liver (which was later confirmed with biopsies). Which a week later had gone from 5 tiny spots to 2 large and over a dozen small spots. We had to keep delaying treatment until we had a positive liver biopsy to be able to qualify for the treatment I'm now on.

The treatment itself is immunotherapy. No other treatments were effective against the tumors, so these meds are really the only shot I have. With the official diagnosis of stage IV disease, it is not curable. Treatment can only be palliative, which means making me comfortable by managing symptoms and pain and hopefully buying me extra time. The thing about this treatment is that it is very risky. With how aggressive the cancer is, that means we have to treat it just as aggressively. So we are doing a combination of immunotherapy drugs (ipi/nivo) to start with, at an incredibly high dosage. The combination of the two drugs alone increase the risk of serious side effects, the strength of the drugs also greatly increases the risk of severe or even life threatening side effects. The two main concerns are, the treatment is very likely to trigger auto-immune disorders, like the one that made me legally blind. If these drugs do turn it back on, there’s no way to turn it back off. That means treatment would likely take what remaining vision I have left. The second and more worrying affect treatment could have is toxicity. With the strength of drugs, the likelihood that treatment builds up toxicity in my body is very high. That means the toxicity could overwhelm my body completely, or we do a hard stop on treatment which means disease progression would continue. I had my first dose of treatment at the end of april! Which is such good news, but is also terrifying. The treatment so far has mostly just cause some nausea, fatigue, and some extra joint pain.

I have been very lucky to have moved to Madison this past year. With all my doctors being in Madison it has been much easier to be seen immediately. While this is wonderful and I’m extremely grateful to be seen in such a timely manner, I have had to rely on public transportation or ride programs. Typically Uber or Lyft, which have been very costly. I have spent around several hundred dollars in the past few months for just Uber and Lyft rides alone. I average 4-5 appointments a week. With severe food allergies, food gets even more expensive and difficult to get. I have had a huge rise in varying expenses from rides, food, extra nutrition, and hydration drinks amongst many other costs. With a huge dive in income and skyrocketing expenses, things have been very difficult and stressful.

My goal for this fundraiser is to make sure I have the funds available so that I can continue to make it to these appointments, but also to make sure I have what I need as I go on this journey. My starting goal is to help cover travel expenses, specialized food, and noncovered medical expenses for the time being.

These are what donations will be going to be used for.

first aid supplies/ wound care supplies

KN-95 masks

nutritional drinks like ensure or gatorade

Uber and Lyft cash / other transportation costs

healthy foods/snacks that are allergen safe for long appointment days

Thank you for taking the time to read my story. Any and every donation made will help me to fight this cancer with all my might.

If you're unable to donate monetarily there are many ways you can help instead! Especially if you are close to Madison. some other things I'm looking for are:

rides to and from appointments and errands

stop by for a visit

drop off a warm meal (or a frozen one for later)

help with difficult-to-do household tasks

comfy clothes like sweaters, sweatpants, leggings etc. or a blanket

just reach out and say hi!

I'm sure other things could be extremely helpful as well, that I haven't thought of yet.

Thank you all again for taking the time to read my story. Extra special thanks to those of you who have already shared or donated! Please be sure to share. So many of you have already made such a huge impact on my life. Making sure I have what I need to fight this fight!