Help Suzanne Surf Her "Medical Tsunami"

Who is Suzanne Smart and Why Should You Care?

Suzanne Smart has been a single mother for all of her son’s life (literally, since he was living, rent free, in her womb!). He’s now 36 and a contributing member of society, so she did a good job! He’s a Gunnery Sergeant in the US Marine Corps and has done 2 tours in the Greater Middle East, 1 tour in Germany, 1 in Latvia, and 1 in the Peoples Republic of Congo. Those tours definitely contributed to her current number of grey hairs! He’s volunteered for another deployment overseas to Bahrain and leaves in November for training in North Carolina and then over to Bahrain in December.

So, why do we start out telling you about her son? Because she’s poured so much of herself into making sure he wasn’t behind the eight-ball coming from a single parent home. Being the child of a single mom wasn’t his choice. He shouldn’t have to suffer because of circumstances beyond his control, ya know?

Suzanne has two extremely strong passions in her life. We’ve already introduced you to her first one, her son.

But her second one has been with her for as long as she’s been alive! She LOVES to perform and has been doing so as long as she can remember. God blessed her with a singing voice, speaking voice, stage presence, and the smarts to be willing to learn how to use them all effectively to bring laughter, joy, tears, peace, or connection to others. You can look her up on IMDb.com to see what she’s accomplished as a professional actress in TV and film:

imdb.me/SuzanneHSmart

She’s been blessed to do some stage work along the way as well (Mrs. Lovett in SWEENEY TODD, Josie in A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN, Mother Abbess in THE SOUND OF MUSIC, Gertrude in THE SEA HORSE, and of course, Earth Mother and Iowa Housewife in MENOPAUSE:THE MUSICAL down at the old Society Hill Playhouse, just to name a few. Frankly, theater is her first love!

And she was grateful that, while raising her son, she was able to support the both of them largely through her voice-over work. For a long time, whenever you called the Philadelphia Zoo, it was Suzanne’s voice that greeted you on the Zoo’s phone tree! Also, for a long time, she was the voice at the Franklin Institute’s IMAX theatre that explained exactly what the IMAX experience was. She was also the voice of several constellations in their planetarium!

But one of the most unexpected and rewarding uses of her gifts has been cantoring and lecturing at St. Andrew’s Church, in Drexel Hill as well as a few other parishes in the Delaware County area. She discovered the beauty of music ministry about 32 years ago and has been honored and humbled to have been able to allow the Spirit to work through her for many funerals and weddings to bring a small measure of comfort during both sad and happy occasions. And being able to lector and share the Word with her parish was such a gift! She misses that all so much.

The reason she misses it, is because after much encouragement from friends in the Entertainment industry, she took a HUGE leap of faith and moved to Los Angeles in July of 2019, along with her two “Jersey City Street Cats”, Lovey-Boy and Momma-Girl. The cross-country trek is a one-woman show she’s still threatening to write! It was full of high jinx and hilarity along with fantastically beautiful scenery! Her friends (who encouraged her to make the move) also blackmailed her into doing a ”Vlog” each day of the journey! It was a hoot!

Anyway, shortly after she arrived in LA on the 28th of July 2019 the whole world shut down 8 months later. All her momentum in that market dried up as the industry (and frankly, the whole world) tried to figure out how to move forward in this new landscape of COVID. She had been doing bookkeeping work on the side as a “thrival” job but her main client had to shutter doors while navigating the Pandemic. And thus began a perilous downward spiral for Suzanne.

Through the kindness of her family and some friends (along with a small SBA loan), she was able to survive the Pandemic, but just barely.

Coming out of the Pandemic, her main bookkeeping client reopened, and Suzanne was finally feeling like she could breathe again and not feel like a burden to anyone. But on October 14, 2021, her biggest client, died, very unexpectedly. Jenevieve had turned 44 not even three weeks before. All of the sudden, Suzanne’s majority income was in question. Jenevieve’s parents (her heirs, since she was an only child and died without a will), were on the fence about continuing the business. Jenevieve had built a boutique talent management company, and she was VERY good. Suzanne was her CFO, Bookkeeper, Client Liaison, and overall, Gal Friday. The loss was devastating. A month later, one of Suzanne’s fearless “cross-country cats” had to be put down (inoperable bowel cancer) and 2.5 months later, her sister, Claire, passed away from metastatic cancer, joining her brother, Brian, who had passed of a different metastatic cancer 19.5 months before. (Please note the cancer here… it’s important later in this story).

And while Suzanne was back East for her sister’s funeral, word came that Jenevieve’s parents were DEFINITELY closing the company. And just like that, there went 90% of her income. She was faced with being nearly 60 years old and looking for a job in a city where she really didn’t know that many people. She had been putting in resumes anyway on Monster, and Indeed as well as word-of-mouth, prior to the official closing of Jenevieve Brewer Talent Management, but hadn’t gotten any nibbles. Luckily, she had picked up a small law firm for which she was doing books and payroll as well as an independent real estate agent. But the law firm was only 10 hours a week and the real estate agent work produced about $2,000 annually. These two alone were not enough to cover rent and expenses.

She did pick up a short-term gig that lasted 11 months and that got her through most of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, but that ended in March of 2023. She picked up another small non-profit bookkeeping client at the beginning of 2023 but that only garnered 3 hours a month and, since they were a non-profit, she gave them a 25% discount off her regular bookkeeping rate.

She did book a small role on AMERICAN CRIME STORY:Impeachment in July of 2021 followed by an internet commercial that ran for the month of October of 2021. Then nothing until a small role in FOR ALL MANKIND that shot in January of 2023 and aired in November of that year. While these three bookings were exciting, they didn’t make a dent in the debt she had accumulated “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” for most of 2023.

Then, the Writers’ Strike hit in May of 2023 followed by the SAG-AFTRA Strike in July of 2023. All acting work dried up. There went any hope of booking something that might help her survive until a “thrival” job could be found that would replace the income lost by the closure of Jenevieve’s business.

While continuing to apply for jobs, in September of 2023, she was approached by the office manager of the law firm, Connie (with whom she had become good friends). Connie asked Suzanne to help write her letter of resignation since she thought Suzanne was so much better with words. With sadness, Suzanne agreed, because she would dearly miss working with Connie. But then, Connie took her breath away by asking if Suzanne would be ok with Connie recommending her for the job of Office Manager to replace Connie! It was an answer to a prayer! Connie was planning to submit her letter of resignation in early October and be done in early December! Suzanne just had to figure out a way to survive until then!

But then came the last weekend of September in 2023. Now, keep in mind, Suzanne was born in 1963. She was now 60 years old. And she woke up the morning of 9/24/2023 with what looked like a “period”. That was NOT normal. Not only was Suzanne hanging on by a thread at this point, financially, but she didn’t have health insurance; she couldn’t afford anything.

The “morning scare” forced her to research free clinics in her area. She found the Hollywood-Sunset Free Clinic on 9/26 and they were able to give her an appointment on 9/27. So, in she went! On the 27th, after performing routine exams for women’s health, the doc sent Suzanne to the C. Hudson Community Health Center for an endometrial biopsy and ultrasound. They immediately sent her to LA General Medical Center’s Emergency Department. After 15 hours in the waiting room (staffed by some of the loveliest people, according to Suzanne. She was so impressed!!), they sent her home with orders to follow-up with their Gynecology team to schedule the biopsy. Now, Suzanne had no insurance, remember? Well, turns out, the County of Los Angeles has a program specifically for residents of Los Angeles County called ABILITY TO PAY (or ATP). Suzanne is convinced that, waaaaay back in 2019, God made sure she ended up in Los Angeles County!

She qualified for the 2nd lowest tier and consequently was able to proceed with the necessary medical follow-up. And Connie had agreed to forestall her retirement until Suzanne was through dealing with whatever would be coming down the pike! It would still be a struggle, but Suzanne felt she could figure out a way through it. Thanks to the ATP program Suzanne was able to find a Primary Care Physician who is just fantastic! After talking to Suzanne, Dr. Kaldas ordered several additional tests. And that’s when the “Medical Tsunami” started to swell.

Here's the urgent things that were found:

1. A questionable mass in her right breast that is now being monitored and ultra-sounded every 6 months until they can determine what it truly is.

2. The macro-adenoma she had growing on top of her pituitary had more than doubled in size since it was discovered by accident back in 2007 and was now encroaching into her sinus cavity.

3. There were lesions discovered on her brain and on her spine. Some of them in what they call FLAIR indicating possible Multiple Sclerosis

4. A tumor showed up on her left kidney that is cancerous

Other things have come up as well, but so far, none of them as scary.

But what all of this meant was that the time-frame Suzanne was counting on to take over the office manager job and completely changed and she hasn’t been able to audition for anything, (now that the Entertainment Industry was back on track) because she has no idea when the next surgery will be or how long the recovery will take.

So far, she had the endometrial biopsy that came back cancerous, so she had surgery on January 31st that removed the whole polyp, her ovaries and fallopian tubes (which were past their use-by date anyway!), as well as scraped the lining of her uterus to check for any other possible cancerous cells. So, her poor little uterous was left floatin’ all alone in there singing, “All By Myself”. Recovery from that took longer than she would have liked, but she recovered!

The pathology came back and showed pre-cancerous cells called “EIN” cells. Her bookkeeping brain immediately wondered why in the world her uterus had an Employer Identification Number! That brought a chuckle to the gynecology team! They decided that a full hysterectomy would need to be done, but in the meantime, she would need an IUD to keep the cells relatively in line. (Suzanne said she pondered that this device MAY be about 37 years too late!! Lol...!).

In the meantime, she was referred to a neurosurgery team, a neurologist, an ophthalmologist, and endocrinologist, and an otorhinolaryngologist to start gathering information to have the macro-adenoma removed from atop her pituitary gland. She went from never really needed to go to the doctors to having a whole separate calendar just for medical… stuff.

Turns out, that macro-adenoma was actually BRAIN SURGERY, which kinda freaked her out because no one referred to it as such until a few days before the surgery. And THAT surgery kept getting moved! It was moved FOUR times before it actually happened on 3/11/2024.

It was successful, but she ended up in the ICU for 5.5 days and the recovery included massive headaches, limited screentime due to headaches (so work was impacted), and extreme exhaustion.

Again, she weathered it, but only made it through financially due to the kindness of two friends. Otherwise, she never would have been able to cover most of her bills AND her rent. Her income only allows her to do one or the other; not both.

Currently, while basically recovered from brain surgery with only occasional headaches, eye exhaustion, and energy depletion, she’s been spending her time “herding kittens” trying to get the next two surgeries scheduled. The current “episodic season” in TV is quickly rushing by and she hasn’t been able to audition for anything since she has no idea what her availability might be. She expressed how she has no idea how folks who are feeling really sick handle being their own advocates! It’s exhausting staying on top of all the docs and procedures and notes, etc... Crazy.

As she’s navigating all of this, Connie literally JUST dropped a bomb that has really knocked Suzanne off balance in a big way. Connie told her that she has come to the conclusion that she can’t afford to retire. So now, on top of dealing with this “Medical Tsunami”, she’s gotta find work!

Prior this announcement, she was getting through all of this knowing that, at the end of it, she would be taking over a job that would allow her to breathe, pay folks back, and cover all her living expenses. Now, she has no idea how she’s gonna move forward. She has to stay in LA County so she can continue to address all these medical issues through the ATP program. And she couldn’t afford to move, even if she wanted. Her savings is completely depleted. She’s cutting down everywhere she can to reduce her monthly expenses. But her rent is significant and covers 78.75% of the monthly income from the law firm, leaving the small amount from the non-profit (about $135 a month) and the occasional invoice from the real estate agent (about $350 per QUARTER) and the occasional small residuals from her previous acting work (about $300 per quarter) to cover everything else. More month at the end of the money than money at the end of the month.

She’s very aware that she’s not the only person struggling to make ends meet. She’s keeping herself open to new work (if anyone needs an online bookkeeper, please reach out!!) but we’d like to help her focus on medical situation than her financial situation so she can concentrate on getting better. Once she’s through these next surgeries and recovered, she’ll be back poundin’ the pavement for bookkeeping work and submitting for auditions! It’s just that in-between time is terrifying for her.

If you can help at all, gosh, she’ll be so grateful. She’s running about $2500 a month short.

And if your own budget doesn’t allow it, she’d be grateful for your prayers and positive vibes!

Thanks for taking the time to read this missive.