Help Sarah through her breast cancer treatment

Some of you may be aware that Sarah O was recently diagnosed with breast cancer. The news of this has been a big shock for Sarah and their partner Reuben who have had to make a lot of sacrifices and are really in need of help. Sarah is 28 years old which is unusually young for this diagnosis and her age means the aggression of the cancer is more severe. Sarah's chemotherapy and targeted therapy treatment is going to be a 6 month long process of treatments every 3 weeks followed by a major surgery which will take a further 6-8 weeks for them to recover from. Due to extreme nausea and fatigue caused by their treatment Sarah is unable to work at all for about 10 days after each treatment. In addition to this, Sarah is no longer able to work in their profession as a live sound engineer as they are now immunocompromised and can’t work in crowds, drastically affecting their ability to earn an income.

In the midst of the initial diagnosis stage Sarah and Reuben were also urged to move house by Sarah's health care team due to issues of mould in their previous home which posed a high risk of fungal infection during chemotherapy. This sudden move was extremely stressful both emotionally and financially. Due to the urgency of their need for a new home they’ve ended up somewhere with significantly higher rent each month. With the amount of work they’ve both missed already and will continue to miss as well as the large amount of expenses involved in moving house they have completely exhausted their savings and are currently struggling financially. Added to this, many of the medications and part of the treatment Sarah has to take have to be paid out of pocket as they are not government subsidised including over $6000 for one of the targeted treatments.

Government support is little to non-existent for people in this situation so we are looking for donations to get some money together to help them with their medical and living expenses until Sarah gets better. With the chemotherapy and targeted treatments plus surgery they are looking at around 8 months in which their income will be extremely decreased. They want to thank family, friends and community members for your help, kindness and offers of support. Any contribution big or small would be incredibly helpful and endlessly appreciated.