Help Sarah Janisch's Family in Their Time of Need

Hi - this is Cynthia Turnipseed. One of our own, Sarah Janisch, has been a pet sitter with Your Helping Paws for over 10 years. She has a loving husband and three children. One is in college, another is graduating high school this year, and the third is still in elementary school.

Fate has not been kind. Sarah noticed feeling ill in early April. Her husband, Phillip, was just getting over the flu, so she thought she had caught it. But despite usually being able to work under duress and care for her clients' fur babies and her family as she always has, she found that she couldn’t focus and quickly became withdrawn and uncommunicative from her family, work, and everything around her. Sarah’s condition was deteriorating quickly, so there was no choice but to take her to the ER.

The hospital has now done some testing and on 4/16 determined that Sarah has stage 4 cancer and that it has spread throughout her entire body. Beyond that, the family has not been given a detailed prognosis, but Sarah has essentially crashed, becoming unable to function. They are giving her morphine to get the pain under control, and while we haven’t given up hope, the prognosis does not look good.

Unfortunately, this isn’t some awful dream. It is happening right now to a treasured member of the Paws family. Sarah is uninsured, and her family has no savings and no way to even care for her in this time of need. She has always given so much to everyone around her. She has cared for many clients' fur babies, and her love and devotion to them has always been greatly appreciated. In today’s world, the harsh reality is that these situations are crushing to the whole family. They really need some help right now to cope with Sarah’s condition and the bills which are already piling up.

The financial uncertainty and chaos all around us makes this a difficult time and a tall ask, but the need that Sarah’s family is now faced with is both immediate and terrifying. Please contribute whatever you can to her and her family. They desperately need everyone’s help. We all need to step up and help Sarah and her family survive during this challenging time.