My name is Carol Burress (Fox) Barber. I am, as of September 8, 2025, the widow of Sanford H. Barber, III, “Sandy” to friends and family. We were happily married 46 years.

We had a shared dream of spending a few years of our retirement in France to enjoy the history, food, and wine. We planned to go in the Spring of 2020, but COVID had other plans. We got a puppy instead: Snoopy, a Great Pyrenees. We finally made it to France in late 2023.

Our dream quickly turned into a nightmare.

Sandy died here, in Normandy France, from ampullary carcinoma, a rare and

aggressive abdominal cancer.

….

I need your help to come home to the United States with Snoopy. I am asking for $50,000.

The majority of the money will be used for a large down payment on Sandy’s final hospital bill, which is going to be close to $300,000. I also need to pay for a plane ticket, ship our van, fly Snoopy back, and get resettled.

Snoopy was Sandy’s boy. Great Pyrenees are protectors, and he started “guarding” us when he was no bigger than a toaster and slept at his daddy’s feet. Now he curls up with me at night. I don’t know who misses Sandy the most, him or me.

Here is what happened. Why I don’t have enough money.

In late 2022, we put a plan into action. We got French extended stay visas, bought the required year of health insurance, booked flights, and rented a house in Normandy. We had enough monthly income to meet the French requirements. With the cost of living so much lower, we knew we could live well on our Social Security. And we had a healthy bank account.

We decided to ship our van, as it is paid for, has low mileage, and would double as a packing container. We signed contracts to ship the packed van and fly Snoopy to France. We were scheduled to leave 5/1/2023.

That March, Sandy got really nauseated and turned yellow. His bile duct was blocked, so specialists put in a stent.

That was also when we were told they had found some suspicious cells. But, after multiple tests, scans, MRIs, and endoscopies over the next six months, they found no cancer. Those specialists said it would probably turn into pancreatic cancer, but that would take years.

Relieved and thankful, we left for France, thinking he would be ok for a long time.

We knew about the famous French “red tape” so we quickly started the required process of validating our stay. There were lots of steps and everything was online. We immediately had a problem. Our visas were valid from 5/1/23 to 4/30/24. Because we actually arrived later, the computer would not take our dates. The French consulate in Atlanta had said it would be fine. It was not.

Phone calls, emails, and trips to the county office were useless. But, we learned that thousands of other people coming into France (from all countries) were in the same situation. A class action lawsuit had been filed against the French government and is still ongoing.

Without that documentation, we couldn’t get insurance coverage to drive our van legally here. US auto insurance isn’t accepted. The van is sitting in our back yard, and we have to rent a car.

Before we left the United States, we cancelled our Medicare, because it wasn’t valid here. After 3 months, we were supposed to have coverage in France with a combination of government and private health insurance. Without the visa documentation, we could not get the government health insurance, and the private one year policy we bought could not be renewed.

In late summer 2024, Sandy turned yellow again, and a gastroenterologist at the local

hospital replaced the bile duct stent and ordered more tests.

Sandy was diagnosed with ampullary carcinoma, a rare cancer that forms in an area of your body called the ampulla of Vater. It’s a 2cm spot where the bile duct and pancreatic duct join. We were devastated and scared.

With no insurance, we would have to pay for everything. So we did. Doctor visits, tests, scans, and prescriptions are much cheaper here than at home, and we had paid for the stent procedure, so maybe we would be OK.

They put a chemo port in Sandy’s shoulder and scheduled chemotherapy. But he got

an infection, so a home care nurse had to come for 2 weeks of daily antibiotic shots and pills. That postponed the chemo. When he felt better, the same oncologist refused to reschedule the chemo, now saying he “doubted it would work.”

We asked about other options, but the oncologist never responded to our phone calls and emails. Then Sandy started losing weight at an alarming rate. Out of options, we took him to a larger hospital in a city an hour away from here.

They found the cancer had grown and was blocking most of the exit from his stomach to his intestines. And they said Sandy couldn’t have “The Whipple,” the complex surgery to remove the cancer (and parts of several organs) because he was too old, too sick, and too weak to survive it.

That team of surgeons suggested and performed a work around surgery intended to give him another year of life. They bypassed the cancer with an internal feeding tube so he could eat a liquid/soft diet and put in an external feeding tube until he healed. We were hopeful again.

The first few weeks after the surgery, Sandy started to feel better and gained a little weight. His huge incision was healing nicely, and he was being fed through the external tube. All he had to do was prove he could make the internal feeding tube work, and he could come home. We were so relieved.

Then he stopped improving. Within 5 weeks of the surgery, the cancer had overtaken both feeding tubes.

I was with him every single day and the night he died. Andrea, Leah, Darcy, Tyson, Eric, Ilana, and Gabe sent him “love letters” just the day before he died. He knew he was loved. He was just so tired.

We held hands every night for 46 years (minus a few over the years) as we went to sleep. I held his hand on our last night together. I miss that and him so very much.

Till the end, we both believed we had been meant to find each other in 1978. I was a wrong number. He was calling an old girlfriend and reached me instead. Cautiously at first, we talked for hours, weeks, before we actually met. During those talks, we found that we both loved NYC. I’d lived there in 1973 and 74. He’d moved there from Gainesville when he graduated and had recently returned. Long time friends of my parents were his next door neighbors. He’d had a huge schoolboy crush on the sister of my brother’s girlfriend. And, he’d gone to football camp in high school with my cousin. Then, I took him to the cemetery with me to visit my parents. His dad was literally buried right next to mine. Our fathers had set us up!

I do not take this situation lightly and will do whatever I can in the future to pay it forward.

Please know that I sincerely appreciate any amount you can give me.