On March 19th, 2024, I got the call that nobody ever wants to get. “Jami, you have breast cancer.” Further testing showed it was the worst kind: triple negative invasive ductile carcinoma. It was such a surprise because I was a young healthy adult. I was not overweight, did not smoke, and did not drink to excess which are the top 3 indicators of breast cancer. There was no history of breast cancer in my family. It made no sense why this was happening to me, but it was.

Life changed immediately. I had surgery to have a port put in my chest so I could start chemotherapy as soon as possible. Then bombshell number two was dropped. Since my husband and I were both self-employed, we used a medical co-share for medical catastrophes. It had been great for us in the past, but cancer treatment was going to require more coverage than the co-share could provide. If we did not find something else to help us, we would be bankrupt and would have to mortgage everything we owned. Therefore we had to go on a mission to find new insurance which was a challenge, but we were able to find something that would work.

This meant we now had two insurance payments and two large deductibles since my treatment is running into a new calendar year. We were also planning to use some naturopath methods alongside traditional medicine and insurance doesn’t cover naturopathic treatment.

Thankfully, we had some money in savings and were able to get a credit card to help with those payments, deductibles, and fees. We are so lucky that this disease did not leave us destitute.

I endured chemotherapy from April until October: sixteen chemotherapy treatments in total. I underwent a double mastectomy surgery in December and still have another surgery to go to complete my reconstruction. I am also continuing to receive infusions of immunotherapy until May. I am so grateful to say that I am “Free from evidence of disease” but I am not free from the damage that treatment has done to my body and our family finances for years to come due to ongoing checks, scans, and treatments.

I would be so grateful if you could give up one bougie coffee or one glass of wine this week in order to help us pay off that credit card and get our savings back to what it once was.

If the amount raised exceeds the amount needed to do those things, I will be using the extra money to fund the start-up of my 501c3 that I will be starting this year to help provide comfortable beanies to chemo patients who lose their hair.