Help Aly Thrive Through Her Cancer Journey

Dear Friends, Family, Community & Caring Strangers,

Yesterday (May 8th) was my surgery and for my new life birthday present I am giving myself the gift of asking for help in the biggest way I ever have, by asking YOU for money. Here's why:

As most of you know, I was diagnosed with Stage 3b breast cancer on October 10, 2023. This came as a shock for many reasons but mainly because there hasn’t been much cancer in my family and as far as I knew, I’ve always been pretty healthy. I also heard this rumor that the more you breastfeed the less likely you are to get cancer, so after nursing three babies I really assumed I was in the clear! But here I am, living with cancer and learning a LOT about how and why I got here.

I’m working hard to make sure I stick around to be a mother to my three young children, Dino (12), Renzo (10), and Maia (5) and to build a beautiful new family with them and my partner Iain. We are remodeling our home to make it work better for the family and to have a unit for my dad to live in. I am also supporting and tending my mom who is living with Lewy Body Dementia. I am determined to not only survive cancer, but heal and THRIVE for many years to come so that I am fulfill my commitments to LIFE. Today, I’m asking for your support to help me do just that.

This experience has been both extremely difficult but also rewarding. Nothing can prepare you to face your mortality at such a young age but in a way I feel lucky. I no longer take life for granted. I am so deeply aware of the profound gift it is just to be here, even if for a brief time. This world is a magical wonderland full of things like babies, puppies, sunsets, love, hot tubs, ice cream, potlucks, flowers, dolphins, airplanes, bunnies, pizza, tomatoes from the garden, and friends and family like YOU. Don't get me wrong, I have dark and very, very hard days. But I am healing and learning just how strong I really am and reclaiming my desire to be here as long as I can.

So, where do things stand now? I finished chemo on March 19, 2024. I did 16 rounds of chemotherapy over 20 weeks. I must say I was a champ at chemo. I had very few side effects and felt pretty decent during most of that time. And we saw significant shrinkage in my tumor! So yay! On May 8th (yesterday as of this writing) I had a full, radical, single mastectomy and lymph node removal. I am doing great today and feeling a lot of relief that the bulk of the cancer is OUT of my body. After I heal from this surgery I will undergo 6 weeks of radiation, and after that, I will be on a cocktail of medications for at least 5 years (all of which promise a variety of unsavory side effects which I will need to learn to manage and mitigate). All of this is to reduce my chances of recurrence and metastasis. The reason that I am staged at 3b is due to the large size of my tumor and the fact that it is in my lymph nodes. I have what is considered a “slow growing” tumor which is good in many ways and gives me time to make big decisions. The downside of slow growing tumors is that they are considered “stable” and can stick around even in the face of all that treatment. They are also more likely to come back 10, 15, or 20 years down the road. I have not yet decided if I will get reconstruction on my breast or not, but if I do, that will require at least one more major surgery, possibly as many as three more. This is all to say that my journey is far from over.

Thankfully I am still considered “curable” and am being treated as such. However, the reality of my situation is that my risk of recurrence and/or metastasis is somewhat high due to the size of my tumor and the spread to my lymph. For that reason I am taking a “leave no stone un-turned” approach and I am pursuing a slew of integrative treatments in addition to the standard of care treatments being offered to me by my western medicine doctors and care team. A couple months ago I started treatments at Anatara Medicine in San Francisco, a highly respected integrative treatment center where the focus is on sussing out “root causes” of cancer diagnoses. Things like lyme disease, mold toxicity, candida overgrowth, heavy metals, unstable blood sugar, thyroid issues, hormonal imbalances, stress, lack of sleep (hello three babies), and other factors can all lead the body into states of imbalance and create an environment favorable to cancer. In this process, I have come to find out I wasn’t as healthy as I thought and I have several sub-acute, underlying chronic health conditions that need to be healed so that I can improve my chances of this cancer not returning.

As you might suspect, all of this is very expensive. The costs of all of my treatments, coupled with the fact that I stopped working in October, have had a significant financial impact on me and my family. I am so lucky to have received an outpouring of support already. I am safe. I have quality food to eat. My kids are well taken care of. I am lucky to have a very loving and supportive partner, Iain Crabb, who is generously supporting me and my kids through this, as well as my parents, Judy and John Filippa. But the bills are piling up and I feel it is time to ask for help from you, my community. Anything you feel willing or able to give me at this time would go directly to helping pay for my medical expenses and treatments over the next several years. Asking for money is a weird thing and it's taken me months to feel like this is the right thing to do. But after dropping a considerable sum of money in the past couple months on some important out-of-pocket labs and treatments, I do believe the right thing to do right now is to cast wide net and ask for support from all of you who know me, love me and want to see me stick around here on this beautiful earth for as long as I can. Thank you for reading and please donate whatever feels aligned in your heart. And it goes without saying that if you can't donate your love and care is more then enough. Thank you for being here.

Love you all. ~ Aly