Being diagnosed with a rare kind of cancer at the age of 29 in the middle of a global pandemic sounds like something out of a horror film, but it's what happened to my younger sister, Gianna, at the end of January 2021.

After waking up one day with unexplained swelling and chest pain, Gi found out she had a brick-sized tumor growing in the space between her lungs and pressing on her heart. A few days later, the news worsened: She has primary mediastinal B cell lymphoma, a rare, aggressive, and fast-growing subtype of non-hodgkins lymphoma. 

While the prognosis for her cancer is good, this has upended Gi's life: she went from being an active young woman who spent most of her free time skiing and hiking to spending two weeks in the hospital where she was on 24-hour bed alarm and barely able to sleep, move, hold a pen, or eat. She gained 25 pounds of fluid in her upper body and developed blood clots in her arms. Although she's now resting at home with our mom, she'll be undergoing several rounds of 5-day inpatient chemotherapy through at least mid-May, and she can't work for the foreseeable future.

My sister is one of the coolest, funniest, kindest people I know, and standing next to her is like finally feeling the sun on your face after weeks of rain. She shouldn't have to fight this battle at all, but she chooses every day to wake up and face it head on.

I started this GoFundMe so that she doesn't have to think about money while she's trying to beat cancer in the middle of a pandemic. Every donation here will go toward Gi's medical bills (including prescriptions, hospital services, and anything not covered by insurance) or to pay for living expenses while she can't work. 

Any and all donations help, and we appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers. I'm confident that this will be just a distant memory one day, but in the meantime, I'm hoping this can provide Gi with some relief.