Help Suzie beat cancer!

My selfless, beautiful, and kind (former) step-mom, Suzie Black, was recently diagnosed with a colorectal cancer (one doctor says Stage 2, another says Stage 3). The treatment will consist of two rounds of chemo and daily radiation for 6 weeks, which come with a whole host of side effects that continue and get worse for 6-8 weeks after treatment ends. In fact, the doctor said to her, “this is one of the most brutal treatments we offer.”

Suzie recently took to Facebook asking for her friends to think of her and send well-wishes, but the reality is that financial support is also very crucial at this time.

Suzie unfairly lost her job of 8.5 years in November 2022 after battling COVID (which turned into long-COVID) earlier that Fall. She’s been out of work and just when she found a new job, she received this cancer diagnosis, which meant she had to turn down the job in order to focus on kicking cancer’s a**. While Suzie is paying for COBRA insurance, it’s expensive (as are the deductibles and copays), and even with insurance the copay for just part of one of her chemo drugs is over $1,000. Additionally, Suzie is receiving treatments in Seattle, which means she needed to find a rental for her and her two pups in Seattle for 6 weeks rather than driving 3 hours each day round trip from Bellingham.

And that’s just the basics… as this treatment gets going, we don’t know what else will come up. Her closest people don’t live in the Seattle area and we are doing everything we can from afar, but would love to know she is taken cared of as needed. Some ways Suzie may need more support as treatment progress includes hiring a dog walker, hiring an in-home care giver to stop by to assist, hiring someone to change her bedsheets/clean up, receiving rides to and from treatment, hiring a meal service program, and maybe finding a good psycho-oncologist to provide support as Suzie navigates this difficult diagnosis and treatment. Of course, all of these services add up.

If you know Suzie, you know she doesn’t want to impose or burden anyone, but right now she’s needing support. We’ll continue to gladly accept thoughts and well-wishes, but if you have any financial support to spare (even $5), she really needs that at this time as well.