If there is anyone who knows what it is to fight against challenging circumstances and endure, it is Marisol Ruiz. She is the strongest person I know. Now at 51, she has to fight against an unexpected and devastating stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis. Our family is all stunned hearing this news as we have no history of cancer, and this is a rare form with no known causes. She was given a 2-year life expectancy, but with treatment, we’re hopeful that she can beat it and give her more time with us as we are not ready to lose her. We’re asking for help in fundraising to be able to afford her medical and living expenses, as she will be out of work indefinitely.

This first month we got the diagnosis has been a whirlwind. Her partner at the time had a chronic disease and quickly began to succumb to liver failure. She spent her time caring for him and helping him get all the medical care he needed. Unfortunately, on October 19th, he passed away. Then the unimaginable happened. That same week she had been seeing a doctor due to abdomen pain, and the day just after he passed, the doctor called and said that they’d found tumors on her pancreas and liver. The following week we got the full diagnosis that it was stage 4. We still can not believe how it all happened at once. She is scared, but with her family and friends, we are all trying to stay strong and help her on this difficult journey.

If you know Marisol, you know that she is such a wonderful and caring woman. That’s not to say she didn’t have a difficult life. As the second oldest in her family of seven siblings, she had to take on a caretaker role early and find ways to support her family. This meant always finding a job and having to drop out of high school to focus on providing. As she got older and immigrated to the US, she began to struggle with severe anxiety and depression. She suffered through an unhappy marriage to an alcoholic and emotionally unsupportive husband. This worsened her mental health, and she suffered severe depressive episodes. The marriage lasted 20 years until she finally divorced. At last, she began to focus on herself and regain her mental stability. She overcame depression and worked various jobs to sustain herself and help put her kids through college. She had found a new partner, and she was making her life happy again. Now, this cancer diagnosis is threatening the life she was able to make for herself after everything she’s been through. She fears falling into another depression that will make it harder for her to fight.

In light of everything she has experienced, she has not lost her light. She is a woman who possesses so many gifts and has so much left to offer the world. She is incredibly smart, caring, unique, a hard worker, a social butterfly, crafty, an amazing cook, a loving mother, and has a great sense of humor. She is always caught up in a new hobby, whether it be biking, jewelry making, cooking, nail art, painting, or gardening. She is an individual who has so willfully sacrificed so much of herself in service to others. There is so much left for her to do in this world. So much for her to learn and see and discover.

Everything has changed in such a short matter of time. Marisol has so much more life left to live, and we refuse to abandon hope. We kindly ask for any donations to help with the ordeal. Any help is greatly appreciated from the bottom of our hearts. May God bless you and bring us all health.