Lisa’s Cancer Treatment and Support

Hi, my name is Shelah. My sister Rebekah and I are asking for support to help with our moms medical bills and some supplemental funds while we take care of her.

How her medical story began:

In October, we took our mom Lisa to the hospital with what we thought was painful muscle in her shoulder. After a number of tests, they found she had Stage 3 Squamous Carcinoma (now stage 4), a form of Lung Cancer, and also COPD. She has been through Radiation and some Chemotherapy sessions, but is derailed continuously with long stays at the hospital. Late February, she unfortunately caught the dreaded Corona virus. If that was not scary enough for a lung cancer patient, she also developed Pneumonia at the same time. Along with myself and my sister, our brother came from out of state to help with whatever we needed and to stay with her during that scary time in the hospital.

She is now dependent on us for just about everything. She can’t really eat much, so she had a feeding tube (or PEG tube) placed in February. Her weight was diminishing so rapidly, the doctors said we had no choice. She is also on a regular schedule of medications, breathing treatments and ventilators for therapy. Right now, she is home, as comfortable as she can be in a hospital bed. She has nurses in and out all week long, but they are only here for therapy and vitals.

Last week, she fell while moving from her chair to her bed, so now her safety is our priority, which requires one of us home.

I already quit my full time job in January, and am now only working a few hours a day so I am able to be home when needed. My sister is working less as well, so we have unfortunately exhausted any of our savings and even 401k funds to pay for things.

With our moms medical bills adding up, we are getting more and more behind on bills, rent and mortgage. We just need a little help with funds so we can catch back up with our own finances, and have enough for additional medical bills coming in. We had been so focused on her treatments and hospital visits, we really did not look at our incomes, or lack there of.

We are not proud to be asking for help, but it has now come to the point where we actually need it.

For her to continue her treatments, we can’t lose my sisters house. And more importantly, we don’t want to lose our mom!!