Help Cortney Kick-out that Kidney

Hi, I'm Lisa. If you don't know me, Cortney and I have been friends for 13 years now. She's my best friend; we raised our kids together as single parents, we've survived nursing school together... we've been through a lot together over those years. She also helped support me when I had a big surgery a few years ago, so now it's my turn to repay the gift.

A few weeks ago, Cortney was having some intense pain that took her to the ER. She almost left and didn't go in, but it's good that she did. Turns out that pain was unrelated, but they did some imaging and found out she has a tumor taking over nearly half of one of her kidneys. Now the plan is that on May 5th, Cortney is going to have a total nephrectomy, which means they're going to remove that lumpy, ugly kidney in a little kidney body bag. The odds are 85% that it's renal cell carcinoma, aka cancer, but even if it were benign, it would still need to come out. The good news is that they expect that's all she'll need to do. Get rid of the tumor kidney, and do some yearly follow-up monitoring (fingers crossed). We won't know for sure until after the surgery and after pathology gets to look at it.

In the meantime, what we do know is that Cortney will need to be out of work for 6 weeks. And this comes right after we spent 48 days on strike unpaid. She hasn't had much time to try and get caught up after that, so money is already tight, and now it's going to get tighter. I'm hoping to raise some money to help her get caught up and make sure the bills can get paid. I'm hoping she'll have one less thing to stress about when she should be focusing on recovery and her health. If you can help pitch in a few bucks, it would be greatly appreciated, and all funds will go directly to Cortney. I know she hates the idea of this and wouldn't want to ask for the help herself, but I also know she will appreciate it more than you could know.

Thanks for donating or sharing. Love you Cortney ;)