Help Kristina Mosley Fight Cancer

Dear friends and family,

 

We are reaching out to you today to help Kristina Mosley fight stage III colorectal cancer. With your help, Kristina will more easily be able to pay for her medical and living costs while she goes through therapy, surgery, and is on Medical Leave from work.

 

As many of you already know, Kristina works as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), providing Applied Behavior Analysis for children with autism who have developmental delays. She works for a non-profit company, helping children with autism learn vital social and communication skills to help them strive in society despite any challenges they may face; people with autism generally face challenges due to their unique neurodiversity in a world built for neurotypical individuals.

 

Kristina primarily focuses on home-based therapy, where she travels to visit children in their homes for their therapy sessions. Kristina also leads several successful social skills groups and camps, where she organizes a cohort of children that can practice their social skills in a safe environment with their peers. Kristina has been doing this for 10 years and is very passionate about her work and the fact that she gets to help her students more easily and successfully navigate their world.

 

 

Earlier this year, Kristina was suffering from some digestive issues for which her general practitioner advised her some basic treatments such as ingesting more fiber. As the issues persisted, she was scheduled for a colonoscopy but her GP specifically told her "it couldn't be cancer, you’re only in your 30s". On March 13, 2021, during Kristina's colonoscopy, the doctor found a large malignant tumor. A follow-up CT scan diagnosed that Kristina had stage III colorectal cancer, showing that the tumor was close to perforating the organ wall and the cancer had spread to several nearby lymph nodes. She has since met with several surgeons, oncologists, and radiation oncologists, who worked together to come up with a treatment plan for her.

 

Kristina initially had a port implantation in her chest. The port is used to help facilitate the continuous IV treatments she has since received. She has now undergone IV chemotherapy for 16 weeks, with a treatment every other week. A single treatment took the better half of a day in a treatment facility, undergoing several tests and receiving 3 types of chemo fluids via IV. She would then be sent home with a pump connected to her port that would intermittently pump additional chemo fluid every 15 minutes for the next 48 hours.

 

 

It probably goes without saying that the chemotherapy treatment has been a large drain on Kristina, causing side effects such as neuropathy ("damage or dysfunction of one or more nerves that typically results in numbness, tingling, muscle weakness and pain in the affected area.") in her hands and feet, nausea, fatigue, and anemia both during and for up to a week after each treatment. As she got into the latter weeks of the treatment plan, the accumulative effect had prolonged and increased the intensity of the side effects.

 

 

During this entire time, Kristina continued to serve all of her clients! She worked with her company and clients to reschedule all of her work obligations around her treatment schedule and would not miss anything in any given week. She even made home visits to her clients while having a pump attached to her, and suffering from side effects. For those of you who know Kristina, nothing gets her down. She has maintained her optimistic and happy spirit and has been an inspiration for all of us close to her.

 

After the IV chemotherapy, Kristina had a short 2-week period to recover. Barely recovering from the side effects of IV chemotherapy, Kristina began her next phase of treatment which included radiation therapy with chemo pills. Radiation therapy consisted of daily visits (Monday through Friday) to the radiation treatment center for a period of 6 weeks, and daily chemo pills. Side effects from radiation therapy included fatigue, skin irritation, burns, and painful blisters, in addition to hormonal side effects due to the radiation affecting her ovaries. Side effects from chemo pills included more neuropathy that was a magnitude more intense than the IV chemotherapy, making it difficult for Kristina to hold on to things and intermittently cause her to fall while walking.

 

Kristina continued to maintain her high spirits and serve her clients throughout most of this portion of her therapy. Unfortunately, after her 4th week of radiation therapy, the time devotion, side effects, and stress from juggling both therapy and work became too much, and she and her company decided it would be best for her to go on medical leave. Kristina spent a good bit of time ensuring that all of her clients would be transitioned properly to other BCBAs. While on medical leave, Kristina's income is reduced by 40%, and this reduction will continue until she is well enough to return to work full-time.

 

Kristina has now completed her radiation therapy (as of September 17), is on medical leave, and will be healing for the next 8 weeks to get ready for her resection surgery on November 29th which will remove the remaining portions of her tumor. After surgery, she will be required to wear an ileostomy bag  for 6 weeks, and have a follow-up ileostomy closure surgery. Following the ileostomy closure, it will take a period of 4-6 weeks to heal the wound, requiring daily bandage change. We are not sure, but we suspect Kristina will continue to be on medical leave and won’t return to work until at least February 2022.

 

We have a goal of reaching $14,000 to help Kristina pay for her insurance deductible and living costs during this time. Her deductible is $6,000 a year and, unfortunately, the entire process will span beyond the calendar year, causing her to have to pay this twice. Additionally, with a reduction in income through medical leave, Kristina is struggling with day-to-day living expenses, including rent and bills.

 

Like many teachers, Kristina is underpaid for her skills, work, and education experience, and the benefit she provides to society through teaching our youth. A rare fortunate outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kristina has been able to put her student loan debt on hold during this time which allowed her for the first time ever to start saving money. Still she has had to reduce a lot of spending and put on hold any “luxury” expenses, such as vacations and visiting family and friends. Despite Kristina's efforts for spending reduction, we are seeing that Kristina is burning through these newly acquired savings quite rapidly while paying for treatments, appointments, medication, and supplementing her reduced income.

 

We appreciate you for being here and for taking the time to read Kristina's story. We would be most grateful for any help you can provide to help Kristina and her family get to the other side of this difficult time!