Help Amanda Tanaka's Family Through Leukemia Battle

Hi, I'm Steph Shinsako Benesh, and one of my oldest (by years of knowing each other, not her age ;-) ) friends on earth, Amanda Tanaka, needs our help..... immediately.

Over the last weekend in September 2024, Amanda felt as though she might have a virus, missing our 30th High School Reunion. For those that don't know Oak Park, this is quite a big deal. After 3 days of feeling sick, she went to see her physician. During this visit, her physician ran some blood tests, and the results were off. Amanda's oncologist ran more tests, and those results returned with suspicions, which led to a bone marrow biopsy. These results came back on Thursday, October 3rd, and they found that Amanda has Acute Myeloid Leukemia, caused by her previous chemotherapy.

This news is devastating to Amanda, Matt, and the boys (11 & 8). Because of the aggressive nature of this leukemia, Amanda had the weekend to prepare for a month-long stay at the University of Chicago Medical Center. She 'checked in' on Monday to endure 7-10 days of continuous chemotherapy to kill everything in her blood and bone marrow, and then will have two weeks of building her blood numbers up through transfusions and I'm not really sure what else.

Needless to say, everyone is scared.

Now the natural question on everyone's mind is.... How can I help?

The next month is going to be a whirlwind, and Matt will be taking unpaid FMLA to be wherever he needs to be. With this in mind, a few things are in the works..... but right now, our focus is to help Amanda's family stay ahead of their bills to ease their stress.

As many of you may know, medical expense is one of the most common causes of bankruptcy, so we are doing everything we can to help Amanda manage treatments and healing without this added stressor.

We will be trying to find other ways to support Amanda's family throughout her journey, so please check out the Caring Bridge Page for updates and additional needs, like meals and childcare help:

https://www.caringbridge.org/site/ab574079-84a8-11ef-a781-9d1b170ebf22?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web&utm_content=copylink_leftmenu_php

We will keep the Caring Bridge site updated as often as we have news regarding Amanda's journey through this next fight. She is a Warrior!

Please donate what you can, and we also ask that you share with your network. Amanda is one of the most generous, kind, and caring people I have known in this lifetime. If our situations were flipped, I know she'd be doing this for me.

We appreciate your support.