I am in a fight for my life and I need some help.

After battling melanoma in various stages (starting at age 26), it has now progressed to stage 4 metastatic melanoma.

I am the poster child for why we need MEDICARE FOR ALL! I'll tell my story below. Please share it for me and help if you're able. I am grateful for the help, though I wish it wasn't necessary for me to even ask. Thank you.

In 2008, I noticed a mole on my abdomen began to grow and change. It reached the size of about a quarter, so I went to my dermatologist who decided to do a punch biopsy on it. It came back positive for melanoma, so I had wide excision surgery. A surgical oncologist removed the mole and the surrounding skin all the way down to my abdominal wall. Unfortunately, when the pathology came back, it showed that the margins weren't clear so I had a second surgery to take even more skin, leaving me with a scar about 6 inches long on my lower left abdomen. I was grateful to have it gone, so the scar didn't bother me. I was diagnosed with stage 1b melanoma and given a 15% chance it would ever return or progress.

Flash forward to 2017 (NINE years later). At this point, I was a 35-year-old mom to a 2-year-old boy and 5-year-old girl. One Saturday afternoon, I was making sandwiches for the kids and leaned against the counter. Something hurt in my lower left groin, so I went into the bathroom to feel around and see what I could find. I noticed that there was a large, hard spot in the crease of my leg, so I went to urgent care to have it looked at. The doctor at urgent care said that she believed it to be a lymph node that was angry for some reason, but that the reason was likely an infection or any other number of benign things. However, given my history with melanoma, she referred me to have a fine needle aspiration biopsy the following week just to make sure.

When I went in for the fine needle aspiration, the doctor removed a piece of the lymph node to be tested. He told me that the tissue was pink, which to him looked healthy. He said typically in cases of melanoma that has metastasized, the tissue can look black, so he wasn't altogether worried. And neither was I.

The results, however, came back and hit me like a ton of bricks. Positive for melanoma. Because it had metastasized, but was still local to my original mole (lower left abdomen and groin), it automatically meant I progressed to stage 3a. I was referred to a surgical oncologist and scheduled for Lymph Node Dissection surgery. They removed several of the lymph nodes in the area that looked diseased and allowed me to keep some of the healthy looking ones due to the risk of lymphedema in my left leg (important because I was so young and active). Three of the removed nodes came back positive for melanoma.

After surgery, I was referred to a medical oncologist to complete adjuvant therapy in hopes that we could prevent recurrence in the future. The summer of 2017 was brutal. The plan was for me to take 4 infusions of an immunotherapy drug called Yervoy, spaced 3 weeks apart. The infusions (and the benefits) stacked each time, so after my third infusion, I had reached peak level toxicity and the side effects were brutal. I couldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t even drink water. I lost 40 lbs. in the matter of about 4 weeks. I spent a week in the hospital. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong at first, but eventually they sent a scope down my throat and discovered that the drug had damaged my stomach lining to the point that I was bleeding internally. They spent the rest of the week trying to help me begin the healing process, but it was about 3 months before I felt back to “normal”.

Because the toxicity from the Yervoy nearly killed me, my doctor said that I couldn’t take the 4th infusion because he was afraid of what would come next. He also said that my strong reaction could mean that I had total immune response to the drug and that might mean it worked well. So, he took me off immunotherapy and I spent 3 months off of medication in August. After 3 months, he gave me a full body PET scan again and it came back CLEAR! I was ecstatic, feeling like I could put this awful chapter behind me. Little did I know, it would only be a matter of months before the nightmare started again.

In May 2018, I felt another hard spot in my lower left groin. I knew what that likely meant so I got in touch with my oncologist who put a rush on another biopsy. Turns out, it was melanoma again (still localized to the lower left groin/abdomen). My surgical oncologist removed a few more lymph nodes during surgery and two of them came back positive for melanoma. This meant I was moving from Stage 3a to 3b because of the number of infected lymph nodes.

In August 2018, I did 4 weeks of daily radiation focused on the lower left abdomen and groin in hopes it would kill anything that was still in transit or lingering. On September 1, I started taking an oral immunotherapy drug combination - Tafinlar and Mekinist. I was able to take this drug for nearly a year before the toxicity caught up to me. My oncologist took me off the medicine and went back to maintenance PET scans every 3 or 4 months to make sure nothing was popping back up. Eventually I was able to space these scans out to 6 months and then a year. For nearly 6 years, I lived in a world where I had beaten cancer. Unfortunately, melanoma wasn’t done with me yet.

In April 2025, I started to have severe pain in my lower right back and hip. I was 43 at this point, so I figured I was aging and that perhaps it was sciatic pain. It would come and go, so I didn’t think to see a doctor until a few weeks later when the pain worsened, spread to my right shoulder, and was constant. I went to urgent care and they did x-rays of my shoulder and hip. The doctor came back and told me that he didn’t see anything significant, no injury or anything, and sent me home with instructions to treat with acetaminophen and another anti-inflammatory.

About an hour after I returned home, a nurse called me from the urgent care department and told me that another physician had taken a look at my x-rays and that he saw something on the periphery in what appeared to be my lung. Given my cancer history, he recommended that I get an x-ray of my chest facing forward. So… I did and I was unprepared for what came next. My x-ray showed a 7 cm mass in my right lung. I was then immediately referred for a CT to confirm this and to see my oncologist.

As I waited for these appointments, the pain grew exponentially worse. One day, I came home from school and collapsed on the couch. I was in so much pain, I couldn’t stand it. I called my oncologist and he told me to go to the Emergency Room immediately so that I could at least get some relief. So, my husband took me to the ER. The ER admitted me to the hospital and they got my pain under control.

While I was in the hospital, my oncologist sent orders for a variety of scans (CT, PET, brain MRI). It was discovered that I have a tumors in my brain, my lower lumbar spine, my scapula, my left ovary, my lung, my liver, one kidney, in my right hip bone/femur, and in my right jawbone. Stage 4 metastatic melanoma had finally caught up to me. After receiving this devastating news, I was discharged from the hospital after a week and sent home to wait for the next steps.

Unfortunately, I was back in the hospital a day later (for another week long stay) because my insurance was refusing to pay for the oxycodone the hospital prescribed upon discharge.

When I returned to the hospital via ambulance, it took them 3 doses of dilaudid and 2 doses of morphine just to get my pain under control. When I was eventually successfully discharged it was with high dose fentanyl patches just so I could function and not be writhing in pain.

I spent this entire summer at home regaining strength and beginning my targeted medications (Braftovi and Mektovi) that hopefully will give me a better quality and prolonging of life. I haven’t had my first scans after beginning my medicine, but I am hopeful that they are working. My children are 11 and (nearly) 14 now and my goal is to live my life to the fullest and be here to see all of their accomplishments and milestones.

I don’t know what is next for me, but I hope it is a full life. No matter what, I don’t want my illness to be the reason my family suffers. Battling cancer for the last 17 years has bankrupted us and the costs just keep rising. One test (Signatera) that helps my doctor keep track of my tumor load and how well my treatment is working cost almost $22,000. Insurance would only cover $3,000 so I am left with a bill for just over $19,000.

I would be so grateful if you could pass this on to anyone that might be able to help. Thank you for reading this long story. It means a lot to me that people continue to fight for better healthcare for Americans. Especially now as we fight this current anti-science administration and see a reduction or loss of cancer research funds.

Humbly, thank you.