Hello Everyone,

Guess it's time that I fill you all in on with my health. I have been diagnosed with liver cancer, and I am going to the Henry Ford Cancer Center in Detroit for surgery and treatments. Unfortunately, I just found out that my health insurance does not cover hospitalizations and surgery. It is going to cost me almost $50,000 just for the surgery, with the self-pay cash discount. I have tried applying for emergency medical services, but I am not a Michigan resident, and Florida will not approve me because I am not in Florida...

I don't have an extra $50K lying around to pay for it, so I am asking for help from you.

I am scheduled to have the surgery to remove the cancer and explore to see if it has spread anywhere else on the 25th of this month, I need to have the money to pay for it on the day of surgery, or it will be canceled, and I will not be able to get the surgery done to remove the cancer.

It is a sad, sad world we live in when MONEY means more than a person's life! I either come up with $50,000 to pay to have the cancer removed, or I sit here and let the cancer brew inside me. Any help to put toward the bill would be greatly appreciated. Whatever I do not get from donations, I am going to have to take out of the equity in my home, so please share.

9/16/25: I have been sick the past few days and have not been able to get on and say THANK YOU!! to everyone who has donated, you don't know how much it means.

I thought I would explain in a little more detail how this all happened so quickly. First, I have to explain that I happen to be "cursed" with an extremely high pain tolerance, and I do not feel pain until it is to far gone, usually. I also have fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis, so I have body pain anyway. Same thing with my drug tolerance, it usually will take almost double for me as compared to a normal person. This event will make approximately the 5th, maybe 6th time in my life that I have been to the emergency room and told by doctors that they don't know how I am alive and walking into the ER.

I have been having back pain since around June 2024, it just seemed to keep getting worse over the months. Around December 2024 I started having occasional diarrhea that got worse over the months. In July 2025, I started to vomit every time I ate and had watery diarrhea. I have also had terrible outbreaks of night sweats where I literally drench my clothing and bedding. I wear a t-shirt to help soak it up, I usually get up 2x per night and change it. I also break out in the daytime now as well. I am already through menopause, and could not understand what was going on with my body. I ended up going to the Newberry ED in mid-July because of vomiting, diarrhea, extreme back pain, and abdominal pain. They did bloodwork and a CT and found that I have severely inflamed intestines and appears to be crohns, I have a mass on my liver that appears to be cancerous, I have a mass on my adrenal gland, and a severely stenotic celiac artery. I was rehydrated and treated for the pain. I was referred to GI in Marquette to be assessed for Crohn's, and the ER Doc had an order for an MRI put in to look at the mass in my liver better. The MRI also showed signs of cancer. I went to the GI in Marquette and had an endoscopy and colonoscopy done. Dr also confirmed liver mass, celiac artery stenosis, and adrenal gland mass. Dr. put in a consultation at Henry Ford in Detroit to have a biopsy done on the suspected cancer mass on the liver. The pain came back and was getting worse by the day, I kept calling to check on getting the biopsy to see what was going on. I was told that I should go back into the ER when the pain is bad again and getting sick like the last ER visit. I was told to go to the Henry Ford ER instead of Newberry, so I would be in the system and get the biopsy or consult sooner. So that is what I did. I went into the Detroit Henry Ford ER and was ultimately diagnosed with a severe double kidney infection (Dr said this is vey uncommon and that I must have had this kidney infection for at least the past year for it to get as bad as it was, that is because of the high pain tolerance and being unable to feel anything until it gets extremely bad) and hospitalised for over a week from being so septic. I was half malnourished from not being able to keep food down, and I lost about 20 pounds. I was also seen by a liver and kidney oncologist. The plan was to do a needle biopsy to check the liver mass, but after further imaging and testing, he decided that it would be too dangerous to do a needle biopsy because he feels confident that it is a malignant mass and does not want to spread it around by using a needle. He has elected to do a more invasive surgery and wedge the mass out of the liver, and explore to see if it has spread any further. He feels that the celiac artery being severely stenotic is what is causing a lot of the abdominal pain, and is not sure if it is truly stenotic or maybe being compressed by the liver mass, or it could be cancer. They were not able to do the procedure while I was there because I was septic with the double kidney infection, so I was scheduled 3 weeks later, on September 25th to have the surgery. I have health insurance that pays for everything, I don't have a deductible, and my copays are very low. What I did not know was that I have a limited policy and it does not cover surgery! I have never heard of this before with any other insurance I have had, so I had no clue. The finance department tried to get me help through various avenues, but was ultimately denied. I am not a Michigan resident, so I am unable to get any sort of help from the State of Michigan, and Florida State Medicaid will not approve me because I am not in the state of Florida. It has come down to the hospital giving me a cash discount of a little over $50K and I will have to pay the additional $47,700 prior to the surgery being performed.

I have no choice, I have cancer, and if I do not have it removed, I will eventually die of cancer. I have some equity in my home and have been approved to take out a loan against it, I am reaching out to ask for help so I don't have to refinance my house or at least not have to finance so much.

Thanks in advance,

Brenda