My name is Tammi. I'm writing this on behalf of my daughter Bella and her partner of over a decade, Faust — a young man who has been part of our family since he and Bella were teenagers.
In the span of a single month, Faust has gone from "a healthy young person with a cough that won't quit" to fighting for his life and his future on two simultaneous fronts. I want to tell you his story, because it really puts into perspective exactly why the road ahead of him is going to be so long, expensive, and hard.
Here's how we got here:
The diagnosis
For months, Faust had a persistent cough that was repeatedly dismissed or misdiagnosed — mold-induced asthma, they said, then pneumonia. A reaction to antibiotics landed him in the ER, and instead of marching at his college graduation, he spent nearly a week inpatient at St. Joseph's Hospital in Bangor, where he was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism and started on blood thinners.
A bronchoscopy the following week brought a diagnosis of adenocarcinoma (the most common form of lung cancer in nonsmokers). Further testing placed him at Stage 3C, and an MRI was ordered to check for any metastatic spread.
The following week, before those MRI results were even back, Faust had a stroke.
He was rushed by ambulance to EMMC in Bangor, where imaging revealed a blood clot on the left side of his brain, then airlifted to Maine Medical Center in Portland for an emergency procedure. By the time he arrived, it was too late. The stroke had completed.
The MRI results came in while we were waiting for LifeFlight. They showed small metastatic lesions on his brain — meaning the cancer has spread and is now considered Stage 4. We had to temporarily set that news aside to deal with the emergency in front of us, but it of course factors in to every decision we make as we navigate this. Stage 4 cancer is no joke and he cannot wait for treatment.
Where things stand
The stroke caused significant damage to the left side of Faust's brain. He has aphasia (difficulty speaking and understanding language) and has lost nearly all use of his right side. It responds to pain, and he's occasionally moved his right arm, but the deficits are significant: he cannot yet kick his right foot, for example, even though he clearly understands what's been asked of him and is trying hard to follow instructions. Learning to walk again is one of the many difficult tasks ahead of him.
The days immediately following a stroke carry the highest risk of dangerous brain swelling, and we have been holding our breath all week. But, this morning, for the first time, his CT scan showed that swelling going down. We are not out of the woods, and anything can still happen, but we have cleared the most acute and terrifying part of that danger and feel like we can exhale just a little.
He is in the ICU at Maine Medical Center, receiving extraordinary care from a team we cannot say enough good things about. And he is showing us who he still is: he's communicating more each day, responding to the people around him, and spending time watching all his favorite shows : WWI documentaries and YouTube videos about abandoned amusement parks. He smiles at jokes. He made it clear that he did not like the applesauce they gave him to see if he could swallow — and he also made it abundantly clear that he could feed it to himself, thank you very much, with the arm that still works. He spends lot of time looking at the family pictures we've put up around his room. He is especially attentive to stories about his dogs, who are being cared for back home by a friend. This morning he told his mother, in pretty much a full sentence, that a nurse told him he's getting much better. He is making real, measurable progress, and we have dozens of small victories to be so grateful for.
The road ahead
We are, however, also clear-eyed about what comes next. Once he's stable enough to leave the ICU, Faust will need months of intensive inpatient rehabilitation at a specialized acute care facility — the kind that doesn't exist local to us, which means Bella will need to relocate to be near him. Even after he is out of the inpatient facility, there will be intensive, ongoing work and support needed: he'll need speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and very likely mobility aids and in-home support as he works to rebuild what the stroke took.
And running parallel to all of that: Stage 4 lung cancer treatment.
Here is the good news on that front. Through genuine good fortune, Faust's cancer medication is available in pill form and is water soluble. That means he can receive it through his NG tube and his oncology team can treat him right alongside his stroke recovery team, without the logistical nightmare of IV chemotherapy on top of everything else. In a month full of terrible luck, that is a real gift, and we are not taking it for granted.
Faust has bare-bones health insurance. The gap between what his treatment will cost and what his coverage will pay is likely to be significant. We're talking about months, probably years, of cancer treatment, rehabilitation, therapy, equipment, and care. Mobility aids. In-home support. Whatever it takes to give Faust the best possible shot at the fullest possible life.
What we're asking for
Our communities have already shown up in a way we could absolutely not have imagined. Through other channels, friends, family, and even complete strangers have contributed over $23,000 — money that has given Bella and Faust a real cushion for immediate expenses while he's in the hospital. We are staggered by that, and it's made an enormous difference in our level of worry as we go through this. Just to name one example: How much worse if we had to worry about where he'll end up in therapy because we didn't have the resources to relocate her for those months. But we do, and we are so humbled and grateful by the immediate and unbelievably generous outpouring of support.
We've set up this GoFundMe to carry all that support forward — to build a fund aimed specifically at the medical costs, equipment, therapies, and care that will define the next chapter of Faust's recovery. We simply can't imagine denying him anything he needs because of a lack of financial resources.
No amount of money makes any of this okay. But money means Bella can stay by his side. Money means Faust gets access to every tool available to him. Money means that when the next obstacle appears — and there will be more obstacles — we can meet it without also worrying about how to pay for it.
If you can contribute, we are more grateful than we know how to say. If you can't, we welcome every prayer, every good thought, and every share of this page. Getting Faust's story in front of more people is itself a form of help.
He is fighting on two fronts, and we know he'll fight like hell. This morning, his brain swelling from the stroke was down for the first time, and this afternoon, he starts cancer treatment. We just know, with our help, he'll keep building on these wins. We hope you can help us to help him.