Help NYC Poet & Dog Walker Dana Fight Breast Cancer

Goal: $12,000 +

Timeline Safety Net: 3-6 Months

Dear Friends, Family, and Kind Strangers,

For the past 18 years, my life in New York City has been dedicated to two things: caring for your beloved animals as a professional dog trainer and walker, and capturing the beauty of the world through poetry. Every day, I pour my heart into making sure our neighborhood's fur babies are safe, happy, and loved.

Now, I am facing a deeply vulnerable chapter. I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. As a self-employed sole proprietor, I rely entirely on health care cost-sharing in the NYC open marketplace. Because I don't get paid if I don’t walk, the mounting medical expenses for my initial diagnostics and upcoming treatment plan have nearly depleted my business accounts, personal liquidity, and emergency fund.

Compounding this stress, summer is historically my business's slowest season, as many of my regular clients leave the city for summer breaks, cutting my baseline revenue right as my medical costs pierce through.

The Heart of the Matter: My Treatment Plan

The very good news is that we caught this exceptionally early. My biopsy pathology report confirms a small, 0.8 cm (less than half an inch) Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. Because the tumor is under a centimeter and growing slowly, my prognosis is excellent.

I am establishing my care at the prestigious Dubin Breast Center at Mount Sinai to map out my exact surgical path. To tailor my treatment perfectly to my body and numbers, my care team is currently running a series of advanced diagnostics, including a breast MRI, a high-resolution ultrasound, and comprehensive genetic testing.

Depending on these final results, my medical team will guide me down one of two paths:

1. A lumpectomy followed by targeted radiation therapy, or

2. A mastectomy with immediate breast reconstruction, performed simultaneously alongside a specialized plastic surgeon.

Regardless of which surgical path is chosen, the timeline for my primary physical healing and recovery will be approximately two months.

❤️ Paws & Protection: What the Funds Will Be Used For

Because my work as a professional dog walker is highly physical and strenuous, I will be completely unable to work during this intense phase of surgery and healing. As an independent worker, I do not have access to paid sick leave or corporate disability. If I do not walk, I have zero income.

To keep my needs as minimal and streamlined as possible, my parents are moving directly into my current apartment to serve as my full-time caregivers. Your donations will strictly create a lean, vital 3-6 month financial safety net to keep my apartment secure, cover my out-of-pocket medical bills, and ensure my household survives the two months of healing and the initial window of rebuilding my client base.

To ensure total transparency, your donations will directly fund:

• $4,000 • Urgent Medical Out-of-Pocket Costs: To cover immediate un-shareable cost-sharing responsibilities, upfront fees for pathology reviews, and diagnostic scans that must be settled before treatment begins.

• $5,490 • Dana's NYC Housing Security: 3 months of baseline rent ($1,830/month) to keep my own NYC apartment secure while physical labor is impossible.

• $2,010 • Living & Business Continuity: Groceries and household supplies for our caregiving household, utilities, specialized medical recovery apparel, safe transit to Mount Sinai, and vital pet-walking business insurance/overhead to ensure my business survives the hiatus.

• $500 • GoFundMe Platform Fees: Factoring in the transaction fees [GoFundMe Platform Fees] so the underlying funds remain fully intact for survival needs.

A Note on Grant and Relief Applications

To manage this financial strain responsibly, I am working with an on-site social worker and actively applying for financial aid through national and local cancer organizations, including The Pink Fund. While I am hopeful, these grants are highly competitive, have lengthy processing timelines, and come with strict limitations—The Pink Fund, for example, strictly pays specific non-medical bills (like housing or utilities) directly to creditors if approved. Because cancer does not wait for paperwork, this GoFundMe remains my primary lifeline to bridge immediate day-to-day gaps.

❤️ Why Time is of the Essence (Our July 15th Deadline)

Because my current health insurance company’s network contract with Northwell Health and Lenox Hill completely expires on July 15th, I am in a race against the clock. I must successfully transition my entire medical team to the Mount Sinai ecosystem before that date to avoid massive, unresolvable gaps in my care.

I need to raise these baseline funds right now so that my housing and essential business overhead are fully stabilized before my surgery date at Mount Sinai is locked in. Having this safety net in place before July 15th ensures that my treatment is not delayed by administrative boundaries and allows me to face my upcoming surgery with total peace of mind.

What Your Support Means to Me

Allowing myself to be taken care of by the community—the same way I have cared for pets for nearly two decades—is a profoundly humbling experience. Your generosity will literally provide the strength I need to fight this disease. I am deeply grateful for any amount you can share, whether it is a donation or simply sharing this link with others.

❤️ A Gift from My Heart to Your Paws

As a poet and a dog walker, animals and words are how I process the world. While I face this medical hurdle, I want to share a piece of my soul with you. This is a sestina I wrote for an old dog, reflecting the deep, lifelong bond I share with the animals I care for every day. I hope it brings you a moment of beauty, just as your support brings me a moment of peace.

Sestina for the old dog who ran away

I.

The leaves shrivel as Bach bleeds into Beethoven on the ground.

Tongue to nostrils, pupils wide as olives. Black crappies swarm as Night

cries Why? Dead skunk intoxicates and lures her to the Old Bay Junction Road.

Melancholia is the Moon, yes, for the oldest dog

in the land is gone. Heads splinter into a thousand sibylline visions

of her fur. Viperous, jousting words.

II.

The late night gathering of stories, rituals. Tennis balls found, lost. Words

from their depths yip involuntary departure, robbery on holy ground,

a foundation struck by lightning. Echoes of her chain, unleashed visions,

and riotous crowds tell tall tales of fidelity. The small child cries

back to a fork in the north stream, back through centuries to a dog

betwixt blackberry and bramble, to an aria like a growling road.

III.

A haggard barn creaks. The skunk faces a ditch in the gravelly road.

There is no time to look into its dead, pitiless eyes, no words

for a tail as stiff as anvil. She is ageless, the old dog,

master of wolf knowledge. Paw to ground,

then another, encircling the striped beast with soft, low cries

as instincts stir up her fires in single, grayscale visions.

IV.

She is forgetting to remember the role of servility. She hears Mother, visions

of weaning, as red tide masks the smells of sickness and ricochets offroad.

The old dog is young again, a scarlet plum, a mouth forever foamed in cries

of milk. A twig snaps— headlights human words?

But only the bulge of mother, prickled with war beneath the wet ground,

& the phantasmal coos of her siblings hearten the old dog.

V.

It is now you must know the humans loved the old dog.

A son was born, his eyes wide as olives with visions

of her leaping through his dreams. They slept on the ground

& listened to Beethoven for Babies near the old, country road.

Symphony no. 9— the amplified, translated words:

Heavenly your sanctuary! a joyous opus to pacify his cries.

VI.

The old dog loved the child, too, and the smell of his babe-skin. Cries

on the barge, his mother scoops him to wean at her breast. A stuffed dog

to rest on when the boy fed. Her name, followed by ‘dog,’ were his first words.

The old dog who ran away was now a rollicking stream of visions—

biscuits she licked from his fingers, lobster nets on East Bay, the road

shift-shaping into a milk snake, funneling ground as vertigo gripped her body.

Symphonic moon cries, inexplicable visions of Tilly the Shephard, friendlier dogs,

& silver pyramids emerge like a road around loving words

& prostrating mothers over the cloudless, starless ground.

Medical Wishlist & Registry

https://www.saltohealth.com/pages/swym-registry-gifter?registryId=2049483