- S
My dear friends,
I’m writing to you with the hope that you can help me help my mom live longer by praying for her, donating and/or sharing this GoFundMe page.
Family has always been very important to me. Maybe it’s because I experienced foster care and having to be moved from home to home leaves you with a sense of wanting stability and the importance of belonging and being part of a loving family.
Last summer was one of the best ones for my kids, my little brother and me. With the help of a dear friend, I was able to get a loan to purchase our tickets and fly us to Colombia to see our family, who we hadn’t seen in almost 10 long years! We spent three, wonderful, loving and fun weeks with my mom, our cousins, aunts and uncles. Seeing my children interact for the first time with my family was priceless. The love they made my kids feel is just inexplicable. It felt like time had never passed.
A few weeks after our return to NY my mom got really sick. She had been experiencing pains in her abdomen and even to use the bathroom it would hurt her. Thinking that it was a bad case of hemorrhoids she would put ice and take pain killers to alleviate the pain, but boy were we all in for a horrible shock. On August 2, 2016, she couldn’t take the pain anymore. She had been throwing up, bleeding when she used the bathroom, and the pain in her stomach was too much to bear. She fainted and when she woke up she was able to call for help. The ambulance came; her friend accompanied her (my mom lives in Medellin and the rest of our family lives in Barranquilla) but because my mom doesn’t have insurance they had to try three different clinics before finding one that would agree to see her as long as a payment would be submitted to them soon. I sent her my rent for that month and my brother sent what he could. She was put on an IV with medication, and was being observed. Since the pain still persisted they did an x-ray and it showed that she had diverticulitis and required an emergency surgery, which lasted the longest five hours of my life. The not knowing and not being there was just horrible.
After the surgery was done the doctor explained that her infection was severe enough that it caused a rupture on one of the sacs on her intestine. He was able to clean her insides, remove part of her intestine and also proceed with a colostomy. That wasn’t all. He also said that he found a tumor, which he removed and sent for testing. After a few days, the results came back in; my mother was at the beginning of stage 3 colon cancer. I cried. How do I tell my brother? How do I tell my kids? My first instinct was to run to her; to take my children and be by her side. But I couldn’t do that. As a single mom, I need my job and seeing what the medical world is like in Colombia, I knew that I could help her more by being here and sending her what I could.
My current issue is that what I’m able to send her is not nearly enough to cover her needs. With your help, this money will help her with her outstanding medical bills that she needs to pay off so that she’s able to visit her doctors again. They refuse to see her, unless, she pays off her outstanding bills. It will also allow her to continue on her specific diet that she needs to follow so her condition doesn’t get worse. It will help her obtain the different types of medicines she needs to take on a daily basis, that due to the lack of not having insurance and my own financial struggles, sometimes she doesn’t take. And not to mention all the things she needs in order to properly take care of her colostomy (of course until she’s able to have a colostomy reversal, but that too is an expensive surgery). But most importantly, she needs to begin her cancer treatment and without any insurance or financial help this won’t be able to happen, which terrifies me because I know she is running out of time.
I know that everyone has their own struggles in life, but if you can, please donate. If you can’t donate, please share this page, maybe someone in your group of friends can and if they can’t someone in their group of friends may be able to help, you never know. Lastly, I ask you to please keep my family in your prayers.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and helping in an y way that you can.
Love,
Mayra
#CancerSucks!
After watching Martina McBride's, I'm Gonna Love You Through It, video I just lost it and cried like a baby. #CancerSucks
I’m writing to you with the hope that you can help me help my mom live longer by praying for her, donating and/or sharing this GoFundMe page.
Family has always been very important to me. Maybe it’s because I experienced foster care and having to be moved from home to home leaves you with a sense of wanting stability and the importance of belonging and being part of a loving family.
Last summer was one of the best ones for my kids, my little brother and me. With the help of a dear friend, I was able to get a loan to purchase our tickets and fly us to Colombia to see our family, who we hadn’t seen in almost 10 long years! We spent three, wonderful, loving and fun weeks with my mom, our cousins, aunts and uncles. Seeing my children interact for the first time with my family was priceless. The love they made my kids feel is just inexplicable. It felt like time had never passed.
A few weeks after our return to NY my mom got really sick. She had been experiencing pains in her abdomen and even to use the bathroom it would hurt her. Thinking that it was a bad case of hemorrhoids she would put ice and take pain killers to alleviate the pain, but boy were we all in for a horrible shock. On August 2, 2016, she couldn’t take the pain anymore. She had been throwing up, bleeding when she used the bathroom, and the pain in her stomach was too much to bear. She fainted and when she woke up she was able to call for help. The ambulance came; her friend accompanied her (my mom lives in Medellin and the rest of our family lives in Barranquilla) but because my mom doesn’t have insurance they had to try three different clinics before finding one that would agree to see her as long as a payment would be submitted to them soon. I sent her my rent for that month and my brother sent what he could. She was put on an IV with medication, and was being observed. Since the pain still persisted they did an x-ray and it showed that she had diverticulitis and required an emergency surgery, which lasted the longest five hours of my life. The not knowing and not being there was just horrible.
After the surgery was done the doctor explained that her infection was severe enough that it caused a rupture on one of the sacs on her intestine. He was able to clean her insides, remove part of her intestine and also proceed with a colostomy. That wasn’t all. He also said that he found a tumor, which he removed and sent for testing. After a few days, the results came back in; my mother was at the beginning of stage 3 colon cancer. I cried. How do I tell my brother? How do I tell my kids? My first instinct was to run to her; to take my children and be by her side. But I couldn’t do that. As a single mom, I need my job and seeing what the medical world is like in Colombia, I knew that I could help her more by being here and sending her what I could.
My current issue is that what I’m able to send her is not nearly enough to cover her needs. With your help, this money will help her with her outstanding medical bills that she needs to pay off so that she’s able to visit her doctors again. They refuse to see her, unless, she pays off her outstanding bills. It will also allow her to continue on her specific diet that she needs to follow so her condition doesn’t get worse. It will help her obtain the different types of medicines she needs to take on a daily basis, that due to the lack of not having insurance and my own financial struggles, sometimes she doesn’t take. And not to mention all the things she needs in order to properly take care of her colostomy (of course until she’s able to have a colostomy reversal, but that too is an expensive surgery). But most importantly, she needs to begin her cancer treatment and without any insurance or financial help this won’t be able to happen, which terrifies me because I know she is running out of time.
I know that everyone has their own struggles in life, but if you can, please donate. If you can’t donate, please share this page, maybe someone in your group of friends can and if they can’t someone in their group of friends may be able to help, you never know. Lastly, I ask you to please keep my family in your prayers.
Thank you so much for taking the time to read this and helping in an y way that you can.
Love,
Mayra
#CancerSucks!
After watching Martina McBride's, I'm Gonna Love You Through It, video I just lost it and cried like a baby. #CancerSucks