Mark Mondahl and Marcy Western

This is a fund raiser for my mother, Marcy Western and for the love of her life of 30 years, Mark Mondahl. This past summer, Mark was diagnosed with throat cancer that spread to his lymph nodes and had several weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatments. While doctors warned that the recovery time would be long, Mark has had some complications including pneumonia and hospitalization and is now in the hospital again with aspiration pneumonia and still not recovering properly. He had trouble eating and keeping food down in the first few weeks at home because of the surgery and radiation on his throat and a feeding tube was put in. Even then, he still struggled to get enough nutrition and keep the formula down. At his most recent check up last week the doctors didn't think he was recovering well enough or fast enough and hospitalized him again to see what the hold up was. That is when they found that he has aspiration pneumonia and had more fluid built up between his chest cavity and his lungs. After waiting a couple of days for the antibiotics to fix this it was clear that wasn't going to cut it. They then went in this past Wednesday and made several small incisions in his chest cavity to drain the fluid. After surgery, his blood pressure dropped and his breathing was very labored so they had to intibate him. They took the intibation tube out on Thursday. I just got word from my mom, though, that they had to reintibate today.    About my mother: My mom is a  hard worker and having a full time job and a part time weekend job is fairly common for her. She is incredibly responsible with her sick and vacation leave and has not run out of sick or vacation time allotted to her from her job for the past 11 years. Until now. She has quit her part time job to focus on Mark's recovery and so that she could go into work early and on weekends at her full time job so that she wouldn't run out of time. As of this week, she was granted a leave of absence because of extenuating circumstances with Mark's illness so that she will not be fired from her job for absences, however, this does not cover her paycheck. There will be no pay when she is not there, and she will not leave Mark's side while he is in ICU. She has had to have her dog fostered by family members at this time.    To make matters more complicated for these two, just after Mark's diagnosis, they had moved to a new house. So, with her dog being fostered, moving boxes cluttering her house since the summer, and worrying about the love of her life in the hospital, she is now without pay for every moment of work she misses to be at his side.     I would love to help them both out with lightening the load of worry a bit with some financial assistance so she can continue to pay their bills while Mark is in the hospital.