Help Angela through surgeries, cancer and full recovery!

Angela Callais is a wonderful therapist, committed activist, skilled birth/postpartum doula, caring community member, loving mother, friend, and healer. She is hilarious, kind, loving, generous, and deeply valued by the people close to her, as well as, by all who are touched by her work.

What most people don’t know is that Angela has gone through an unfathomable amount of medical trauma in her life. Some of it was when she was younger - a skull fracture at the age of 4, a near-fatal car accident at age 19 that left her hospitalized for months with almost 20 broken bones, many internal injuries and needing to re-learn how to do the most basic tasks of living, including learning how to walk again.

Since the summer of 2021, Angela has been in back-to-back surprise medical crisis.

In July of 2021 Angela contracted Lyme disease that turned into the rare form of Lyme Carditis. A six-year-long-awaited right hip replacement went catastrophically wrong in September of 2022, when Angela’s surgeons provoked blood clots that went to her heart and caused a full cardiac arrest. After she was resuscitated, she would go on to have three more surgeries over the next two weeks and be hospitalized for five weeks.

Next was a left hip replacement in February of 2023 that went smoothly, and she thought she was finally out of the woods. But, just a few short months later - she was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer. And in that workup, they found a separate thyroid cancer. She then spent the last seven months going through chemotherapy, external radiation, internal radiation, surgery and radioactive iodine treatments.

Just when she received the news via PET scan that the cancer treatments had worked (!), she learned the shocking news that her right hip had an infection and in March of 2024, had to go back to surgery to have her right hip replaced again. The infection was not bacteria as expected, but rather yeast - caused by her severe immunocompromised status from cancer treatments.

Then, last week at her six week follow-up appointment with her surgeon, Angela learned that what seemed like a small issue with her incision was actually very serious and she would need to go back to the operating room on 4/22/24 and start all over again. They will be re-opening the full 24 inch incision (including cutting all of the muscles again), debriding and washing all of the soft tissue, but not taking out the hardware. Angela’s surgeon does not have high confidence that this will be aggressive enough, but Angela has chosen to try the less invasive approach first because the next step is incredibly aggressive and has a long timeline to recovery. This will be Angela's FIFTH time time of having to learn how to walk again.

Angela has only been able to work for 4 of the last 20 months. As a solo self employed person, she has existed entirely on donations from friends, family and the kindness of strangers that have been touched in some way by her story. You can see her previous fundraisers here (https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-angela-with-her-surgery) and here (https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-angela-through-cancer-treatments). You can read the details of her story on her CaringBridge as well, here: https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/angelacallais

Here is what Angela has to say in her own words:

The clock just started over again for my return to work, and I have to be honest - I desperately need your financial help. Over the last couple of years, you have literally kept me alive. Yes, YOU! Sharing your love with words, acts of service, donating money, sharing the news - so many ways you have sustained my life. I have been able to work only 4 of the last 20 months. Your monetary donations have been my sole source of income during this time. Given my current state of healing and with this upcoming surgery, it is still going to be multiple months at minimum before I can return to work. Since I made so little money last year I received a tax return for the first time in a long time, but it is almost gone. So, I return to you.

It is humbling beyond my wildest imagination to continue to have to bare myself in vulnerability to ask, and to have to do it over and over again. And, I can say I am truly grateful for the lessons that it has taught me and how it has shown me that I am connected to amazing people, who are also connected to their own amazing people, and so on. Together, we can create a safety net so that I can rest, recover and truly heal. Please help me make it through the next months so that I can wholly return to community.

Angela is still facing an uncertain and scary future both medically and financially.

In order to be able to heal, Angela needs our financial help. This extraordinary amount of back-to-back medical crisis has gutted her financially, physically, emotionally, spiritually. We can give her the gift of being able to put all of her energy into her physical, emotional and spiritual recovery by making sure she has the financial resources to meet her basic needs.

Successful treatment means she will live a normal lifespan…and enjoy a life free from pain and medical trauma, though she will have monitoring for years to come. We are currently setting the goal at $25,000, which should cover her expenses through the summer.

If just 250 friends donate $100 each, we reach our goal within days and put Angela’s mind to ease while she is healing from yet another surgery. What a gift that would be for her! We are serious when we say any amount helps! Think about it like this, $5 will pay for parking at follow up appointments –$25 will pay for parking for a week. $50 will fill up her gas tank. $100 will pay for a week’s grocery bill. $250 will pay a utility bill. $500 will help with her mortgage. $1000 will begin to secure stability to keep her in her warm, familiar home where her compromised immune system will be protected from communicable diseases like the flu and COVID. Any amount helps financially and every donor helps her emotionally.

If you are not able to donate the best thing you can do is SHARE this post with all of your networks, friends, and family. Put out a donation jar at your work, or arrange a donation pool at your clubs and community organizations. Someone you know will be touched by her story and will want to donate. Please give them the opportunity to help Angela and allow Angela to be helped by them. Paying it forward is more than a saying, it’s literally life-giving for Angela.

If anyone deserves a pain- and disease-free life, you and I both know it’s Angela--someone who has brought endless joy, empowerment, and love to so many.

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/angelacallais