<div>Putting this into writing is difficult. The reality of the situation becomes all too real when it’s written out in front of you. After months of searching for answers, Gracie Guardino has been diagnosed with Adrenal Cancer. Doctors have given her 12-18 months to live but she's ready to prove them wrong.
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<div>A CT scan uncovered a 10.2-inch tumor found in her stomach with spots spreading into her lungs. After a biopsy and additional testing, it was confirmed on February 3rd, 2023 that it was a rare form of cancer (Adrenocortical carcinoma).
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<div>What Gracie and the whole Guardino family are going through is heartbreaking but Gracie is ready to fight, the Guardinos are ready to fight, and we’re going to do everything possible to beat this damn thing.
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<div>With that said, while Gracie is insured, treatment is going to cause severe financial stress on the family and any donation amount will make a world of difference not only financially but mentally.
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<div>For anyone that knows Gracie this situation will come as a major shock. She’s 29 years old and as health-conscious as they come. Bone broth is her drink of choice, not beer. Pilates is her night out, not the bars. Over the past year, she’s been actively pursuing becoming certified as a Pilates instructor with the goal to move to Mexico, teach Pilates, and let her curiosity for travel and adventure take her around the world. She was a few months away from making this dream become reality until this diagnosis threw a wrench in her plan.
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<div>While her dreams may be on pause she’s ready to fight and get back to the life she’s been working so hard to create. Your support means everything to us. I don’t know what else to say, except thank you. Please share this with any friends and family that may be able to help and keep Gracie and the Guardinos in your thoughts.
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<div>For the final word, I wanted to share a piece of writing that Gracie wrote two months before her diagnosis. Her words paint a picture of the pain that this cancer has been causing her that no one else could put so eloquently:
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<div><strong><em>Words from Gracie, written on 11/28/22</em></strong>
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<div>It’s days like these that I want so badly to be angry with my body. Angry with it for the days I get mysterious fevers and chills, for the nights I sweat through my clothes, for the nausea when I’m just trying to eat breakfast, for the heart palpitations at work events, for the fatigue and aches that stop me from my passion of movement, for the hopeless tears I’ve shed because of it all… angry with it for the days it incapacitates me, most recently to the point of not being able to go to my family’s thanksgiving dinner. I just want to feel normal, which is something I’m not sure I’ve ever felt and it’s something I’m scared I’ll never feel again.
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<div>But it’s these moments when I want so badly to be angry with my body, that I realize it has every reason to be angry with me. Every reason to be angry for the years of sabotage and abuse, for the moments I just didn’t know and for the moments I just didn’t listen. These are the moments that brought me - us - here. But it isn’t angry with me. Instead, without the need for a “thank you” or an “I’m sorry”, it fights for me and this normalcy that I long for.
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<div>Each fever a message. Each bout of nausea a direction. Each drop of sweat a purge. Each tear a release. Each breath an act of love. Each heartbeat - something sacred &amp; unconditional.
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<div>We entered this world a unit, with an unspoken, unacknowledged agreement that it would silently take care of me in any capacity it knew how for as long as it could carry me. All I had to do was exist. But I no longer want this agreement to be one sided. So I’m rewriting it-
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<div>Dear body, vessel, temple -
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<div>I take care of you, and you take care of me. You’ve always so selflessly held up your end of the bargain. And if I hold up mine, maybe then, we can really live.
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<div>It is not discipline but devotion, not solitude but a sacred union, that will heal us. We cannot be untangled, so why should I treat you as so separate from my Self? Leave you to fend for yourself in this world that I lead you through?
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<div>It seems until now I’ve been too selfish to learn your language. But I know that you speak in unwavering truths.
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<div>I ask, ‘What do you need me to do?’
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<div>You say, ‘Listen….’
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<div>Are you listening?
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Barbara Guardino

Anonymous

Liz-Rob Richmond

Becky Johnson

Jane Howard

Danielle Sabol

Alex Buli

Carrie Hawn

Lisa Albrich

Allison Ikenouye Klassen

Help Gracie Kick Cancer’s Ass

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