update: ***Goal updated due to fees from platform and upcoming procedure***

This is one of the hardest things I have ever written in my life. I apologize in advance for the graphic nature of my writing. 

Over the past few years, doctors have discovered multiple masses across my body. I spent time in denial and shock that I would have to take this on alone, across the country. Fast forward, KP is threatening to cancel ongoing coverage unless I pay the bills from the cancer testing, biopsies, and excessive visits and treatment. 

I grew up Caribbean in Harlem/Washington Heights in New York City, surrounded by family, culture, noise, love, and the kind of upbringing where you learn early to keep your head down and push through pain. That’s what I watched my immigrant family do so that’s what I was taught. You figure it out. You do not ask for help. You do not let people see when you are struggling. That is what I carried with me my whole life. Especially as the son of a soldier and veteran.

Then I moved across the country to Los Angeles to chase the career I believed in. I don’t regret this decision, because it’s brought so many gifts and blessings to my feet. I left behind my entire family, all the people who raised me, the community that shaped me. I knew it would be hard, but I never expected to be dealing with the heaviest medical chapter of my life while being so far from home. There are days when the distance hits me harder than anything else. Days when I wish I could walk into my mother’s kitchen and feel grounded again, but instead I am waking up alone in another round of doctor’s appointments, trying to hold myself together in silence. 

For a long time now, I have been stuck in a cycle of cancer testing and tumor screenings between a mass in my chest and a potential mass in my bladder. Scan after scan. Biopsies. Specialists. Second, third and fourth opinions. Results that come back unclear over and over again, just so I can be handed off to the next "professional", which only leads to more tests, more waiting, more bills, and more fear sitting in my gut. Waiting weeks or months for answers while trying to stay focused on my life has been draining in a way I never knew was possible.

GRAPHIC***

On top of that, I had been losing an extreme amount of blood regularly because of an unknown mass in my bladder. Some mornings I’d wake up already exhausted. Some days I’d feel myself fading before the day even began. There have been emergency visits and painful episodes that I had to face alone because my people are on the other side of the country. The greatest thing I ever did was finally tell them what was going on. 

So now, I’m building the courage to telling you guys. When terrifying results end up in my inbox, I cannot just call someone in my family to meet me at the hospital. I have to sit with it. That kind of loneliness does something to you.

I stayed quiet about all of this for so long. I kept telling myself I could fight through it the same way I fought through everything else in my life. I tried to work harder. I tried to hide the fear. I tried to convince myself that I would somehow catch up on the bills that kept hitting me one after another. But the truth is that I am drowning. The medical debt has grown to a place I cannot manage on my own anymore while keeping my career afloat. It is affecting my mental health, my body, my work, and my ability to stay present in my own life and work. 

So this is me doing something I was never taught to do. I am asking for help. I need support so I can keep going through this medical process without losing everything I have worked so hard for. Every contribution will go toward cancer screenings, follow up appointments, prescriptions, overdue bills, and all the costs that piled up while I tried to stay strong on my own. I let myself down and I just can’t do that anymore. 

If you made it this far, I thank God for you. 

If can donate, I am grateful. If you cannot, I’m still grateful. Just sharing this still means a lot. I am trying to stay hopeful, even while carrying fear, debt, and the weight of being far away from everyone who raised me, my village. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for caring. And thank you for helping me get through something I never imagined facing alone. And thank you God for giving me the courage to finally speak up.

***Goal updated due to fees from platform and upcoming procedure***