Melanie and Suzanne's Peace of Mind!

Hello-

Welcome to our story, and what a story it is! Many of you may know that Melanie and I are pretty much the epitome of soulmates, and were living out our dream of nesting in our new home and planning and plotting life--happily accepting the joys and adventures of our lives as they came.

Then along came cancer . . .out of the blue. In late December 2022, Melanie had routine blood work done that showed elevated levels of protein, and further tests in January 2023 confirmed that she's got IgG Lambda Multiple Myeloma. MM is a cancer of the plasma, and is currently incurable. While it can be controlled and you can go into remission, you cannot be cured of it. We are in the process of meeting with oncologists at Penn to determine a course of action, and will meet with the transplant team at the end of March. Chemo should be starting in the next week or so.

Some may also know that we had a fairly large legal bill that was settled up in December due to the guardianship issues that I had with my brother, John. We had all of 1 week to celebrate scraping together all of our extra funds to assure we did not go into the New Year with that debt- before this happened. We also have still a large medical bill we are paying from Melanie's oral surgery from 2 years ago.

With those two things looming, as well as the likelihood that our favorite self-employed massage therapist may not be able to work as much- or at all, we are struggling to figure out how we are going to make it all work. She is working as much as she can while she can, and I am also working a second job for as many hours as I can after work and on weekends. Many have asked how they can help, and I am sure there will be more concrete ways like meals, accompaniment to appointments, sanity breaks, etc. However, right now the medical bills are coming in for things already done, and in July we will have new deductibles and things to meet very quickly since cancer care is costly. We are fortunate that we have health insurance, but there are still so many other expenses that we will incur. We are also just concerned about covering the mortgage in the event that Melanie can't work for some period of time. So financial help is what we most need at this point. If we hadn't exhausted our resources in December for the legal bill, we would have some reserve and things wouldn't seem so challenging, but we don't, and that's a scary place to be not knowing what cancer care and transplant are going to look like over the next year.

We have NO expectation that people will support this, and know that many will not. We are ok with that. We know some people want to contribute financially, and we are thankful for those people. Other people can't support us financially, but they can make meals, or drive, or take phone calls from one of us to keep us going through the chaos- and we are just as thankful for that. Some people can offer prayers and love and support in other ways, and we will take it ALL with immense gratitude because we are going to need it. The doctors have said this will be a tough road for the next year or so, but that after chemo and transplant, the prognosis looks good!!

Donating to this would be affording us peace of mind that if she cannot work, or if I exceed my allotted FML time to support her, or if something else on my body breaks in the meantime, that we will not see any more financial losses and stress. Funds will be used to cover medical costs, travel to Philadelphia, meals when we are running around between jobs and chemo, appointments, mortgage, and various other things to support this cancer journey of ours. While it's not a journey we would ever wish on anyone, we know that we are supported by a whole army of people who are cheering her on to the other side of this!

We thank you all in advance for reading this far, for thinking about how you can help, for financially helping, for passing it along if you can't financially help, for prayers, well wishes, and all that. We have struggled a lot with the idea of asking for help in this way, but we have to believe that we have lived our lives in a way that supports us needing some of the amazing help, love, and assistance we have afforded others along the way.

We would also ask that if anyone has any specific questions, that you reach out to me. If you know Melanie, you know that she is super private, and the fact that we are putting ourselves out there in this way is stressful enough, but we understand the importance of being brave enough to know when we need help. I can be reached by text or call at [phone redacted] or by email at [email redacted]