Before I was ever born, my mother was a fighter.

As a single mother raising my brother and I, she fought to put food on our table. Many nights she would go without a meal so that my brother and I could eat.

She fought to pay the bills and keep a roof over our heads while the payments were piling up faster than we were growing up.

Years later, she would fight to understand why my brother was taken from us He served in the Army, only to be diagnosed with a stage 4 Glioblastoma in his brain. He was diagnosed in February of 2015 and gone a few months later at the age of 35.

A few years ago, when her husband of 21 years left her with no support or income she fought to sell her house, pay off her bills and relocate by me in NY.

She would then fight to find a job working in a school, only to lose it months later to COVID.

She fought to secure another job as a home health aide. Then over this past summer, while I was away on vacation, my mother drove herself to the local urgent care with complaints of being out of breath (which she had been experiencing for about two weeks). After giving her an x-ray they told her that she needed to get to the hospital immediately. She was completely filled up with fluid in her lung, and had to fight to breathe. She wanted to drive herself, but they told her that she might not even make it (that is how bad it was) and sent her on her way in an ambulance.

Several scans later, they discovered that not only were her lungs completely filled with fluid, but that there was a 10 cm mass in her right lung-quite significant. She spent the entire week that we were away in the hospital-fighting to keep this all from me so that it did not "ruin my vacation." Upon our return, she was still in the hospital.

When she was finally able to leave the hospital, she was sent home with an oxygen tank and now will be on oxygen for the rest of her life.

The next couple of weeks were spent going to multiple doctors to see what we were dealing with. My mother was diagnosed with Stage 3B or 4 Lung Cancer-inoperable. PET Scans and CT Scans showed that it did not spread to her brain or other vital organs, but that it is locally "advanced" and she is not a surgical candidate.

A diagnosis such as this was not easy to hear and up until now, she fought with me against sharing her story publicly.

The doctors have given her an initial prognosis of 3 to 6 months. She is determined to keep fighting. She has started her chemotherapy treatments, but she has no savings, and Medicaid will not cover many of the items she needs, like a portable Oxygen machine to get back and forth to her appointments.

As her very limited resources are running out. Craig and I have been helping and will continue to do so, but it is not without a fight from her to accept help.

Any donations would be a blessing for a woman who has had to fight for so much of her life. Please help her to fight for a little longer and to make whatever time she has left as comfortable as possible.

Thank you so much, Cancer has no idea of the fight that it is in for!

Brooke and Craig