Help Nicole’s oldest friend fight cancer

Hi My name is Nicole and I am trying save my best friend of 20 years LIFE. She is a 37 year old mother her youngest is just in kindergarten. Currently in and out of the hospital for long periods of time. She has Cancer and it is bad. Her life has now changed forever in a dramatic way. I want to raise money to help cover any of her expenses. This would include her housing, medical, live in support and any other logistics that might come into play when you are in the hospital and trying to care for a family. If I had the money to do all this, I would do so in a heartbeat so even if you don’t know who my friend is, it would mean the world to me if you could help me do this.

The journey to here.

October 2023 pain in the knee just thought she had a bad knee and pulled the muscle and was wearing a brace.

Fast forward to December. There was more pain now kind of traveling down her leg and in her groin area she went to patient first and they gave her steroids and muscle relaxers and told her to follow up with her primary care doctor. She was told to go to physical therapy. Physical therapies not helping.

Febuary 2024 I go to the ER with her. It was very busy. finally get seen and put in a room with three other people in the chairs not beds. They had taken an x-ray, told her her x-ray looked fine and gave her muscle relaxers and steroids and said see spine specialist as it is siatica. I looked the doctor in the eye, I said I’m very worried she has had cervical cancer in the past, can we please do more? I don’t think groin pain sounds like sciatic nerve pain. The doctor assured me she is fine and that sciatica pain can be in the groin. (It can’t)

March appointment with spine specialist. I go with her. Was told based on her x-rays, it does not appear to be sciatica and based on exams, it appears to be coming from the hip. She wants to get an MRI done and that she might need to be referred to an orthopedist.

Insurance denies MRI, Doctor wants to appeal it and tells her to go to physical therapy again because sometimes that helps speed up the process. The physical therapist can really only do ice, heat and 10s unit and they can’t really even work on any stretches because she’s in so much pain and the physical therapist says she’ll do anything to help speed up the appeal process as she can’t help when they don’t know the cause.

April, she has routine appointments with her gynecologist and her oncologist that month both of which she tells about the pain too. The oncologist tells her she’s fine no pet scan was ever ordered in any of her follow up cancer visits from the cervical cancer in 2021. Best guess is because of insurance.

May, she calls me in so much pain and we decide to go back to the ER. She no longer can stand for more than 5 to 10 minutes at a time. This time we plan to just start screaming if they send us home without an MRI being done. Thankfully, we do not need to do that because this doctor took her very seriously her pain very seriously, and the fact that she has been trying to get help and cannot get help, very seriously. They do the scan and it is a very large mass in her idiopathic muscle, which is like the hip area that controls hip movement and knee movement. This mass is also pinching off her kidneys ureter and she needs to have a tube placed and drain for her kidney. It’s also surrounding a vein which is now throwing blood clots and she has multiple blood clots in her leg.

May 10th she is admitted to the hospital and then transferred to John Hopkins. They have been great with trying to control her pain, even though it is very difficult to control. They have a plan and aren’t ruling anything out. Currently on radiation and will start immuno therapy, and chemo.

June moved to cancer ward and is starting chemo.

It is so sad that she was in so much pain for so long and tried to get help for so long only for the outcome to be something that could’ve easily been prevented way early on.

July Release from hospital living in condo near John Hopkins Nurses schedule weekly to change Nephrostomy site bandage. And chemo and immunotherapy every 3 weeks.

Augs hospital stay for uti with changed mental state, which I have seen before, uti are very scary and serious!!!

sept. Her son’s first day of school and the day before her naprostomy site is leaking a lot of blood. Devastatingly she goes back in the hospital. Unable to take her son to his first day of 1st grade. Touch and go for 3 weeks with swollen backed up kidney and unable to void urine.

Oct. Losses her current living place Oct 27th and is in hospital again with kidney infection and stones from calcium build up on internal tube.