The most widely used phrase of 2020 was undoubtedly “this is the worst year ever.” Sadly, for many, that followed as well into 2021. Let me introduce you to our close friend Alicia Lodge. Her story unfortunately, makes calling 2021 a “bad” year sound almost like a

good thing. It started out bad then turned to horrific.

Alicia is the single mother of a beautiful and amazing 12 year old girl, Arianna. She is her best friend and whole world. She is blessed with a loving and supporting family including her mother and brother, but especially her aunt Risa and Uncle Dave who have not only helped guide and support her, but have given her so much love in helping to replace the fresh loss of her father. It also should be mentioned that she has a wonderful boyfriend, Neal, who has been her rock through these series of heartbreak.

In the very beginning of the year, her fur baby was tragically hit by a car and sadly did not survive. Hard when it happens to anyones family pet but even more so when it happens right before your eyes. Fast forward a few weeks and one morning her father woke up with half his face drooping. The thinking was that it may have been a stroke. The prognosis was agonizingly worse. They found he had melanoma that by this point spread to his brain. The remainder of his life was not only arduous for the family but with covid they were not even allowed in the hospital to be with him AT ALL! Due to insurance purposes, they had to bring this very sick man (a father, husband, grandfather) home for hospice. Alicia worked, and went to her moms everyday to help her care for him, administer medicine, among many other things. As if this was not stress enough, while this was occurring, she was laid off from her job due to Covid.

Her father Alan fought a hard fight but succumbed to the cancer at the end of April. Now this would be more than most people could take and it’s only April but the worst (yes believe it, its yet to come) started with what seemed like a pretty normal scenario in a phone call from her obgyn LITERALLY the day before the funeral for her father.

Making a very long story short, an abnormal “female standard test” and a few drs appts with additional testing turned out to be an aggressive form of ovarian cancer!

Nothing prepares you for a gut punch like that but getting it when you feel perfectly healthy, have absolutely no symptoms whatsoever.

Fast forward again to now, the end of July. Alicia was officially diagnosed with stage IIIB Ovarian cancer. She has had a MAJOR surgery to remove all “female” parts, a portion of her colon (they were able to do a resection without needing a bag), along with some other areas in the abdomen that has even the smallest sign of cancer cells. The GOOD news is that they were able to get it ALL!!!! The not so good news is that it was found to be in her lymph nodes with ascites (free fluid) in the abdomen also testing positive for cancer.

Alicia was in the hospital for 8 days, went home with 43 staples and who knows how many internal stitches. But this girl is a ROCK STAR! She not only went home sooner than they had expected for such an invasive surgery, but she is already up and living her life, getting to go to her happy place, the shore, whenever she can before the real “hard stuff” starts.

In a few weeks, Alicia will begin a long and challenging chemo program. This will last for a total of 6 months with and 8 day break in between sessions (rounds). There will be forms of chemo being administered into two different ports. Her phenomenal doctor and his team (which there are no words that come to mind to even describe how wonderful they all have been and will continue to be) are preparing her for how sick she will be through the rest of this journey. The second chemo port is for a much stronger and intense form of chemo which is important for her to have. It REALLY decreases her chances on recurrence and if all goes as planned, for her to go on and live a long and healthy life. She will need maintenance in the form of pills for an additional 2-3 years but they are not nearly as toxic as the actual chemo she will have over these 6 months.

We hope that this is the beginning of the end of the “bad” year and by this time next year, she will be living life feeling normal and healthy.

Due to losing her job in April and now focusing all her time and energy into this battle. With unemployment ending, a young daughter to care for as a single mother, a home to pay rent for, along with the many many bills including groceries, medical bills, utilities and food shopping just to name a few, she is also burdened with how to pay for it all in addition to getting herself healthy on the road to recovery.

We (her friends and family) have created a team, the A-Team, to support her through all of this. We are humbly asking for donations (which are tax free) to help her during this difficult time as well.

Thank you for taking the time to read Alicia’s story and for any assistance to her you can provide.