Nicole Foucher Tastad breast cancer

At age 75, Nicole Foucher Tastad is still the type of person you "can't go anywhere" with, without someone stopping and warmly greeting her, in her adopted town of North Bend, Wa. Nicole moved here 9 years ago to nanny her daughter Dorianne's newborn son Bo, and has since nannied for three other families in the area, as well as coordinating art displays for music venues and wineries, and singing upon occasion at these events, as the former cabaret performer and daughter of an opera singer that she is. People are often amazed to hear that she is 75 and still working full-time, and with her characteristic French flair.

Until, that is, she was let go after being diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of breast cancer, Triple-negative Metaplastic Spindle-cell Carcinoma. Because of the extreme rarity (only around 1% of breast cancer patients) there isn't a body of evidence of how best to treat it, but it is known that conventional chemo is ineffective and in fact even counterproductive. Nicole was put on a new variety that has shown promise in a small number of patients, and which is even supposed to have less harsh side-effects than most chemotherapies, but that hasn't been the case with Nicole.

She continued to work through the first 6 weeks of chemo treatments, but was let go by her employers after missing too much time either from doctor appointments or being too sick to show up. Now the cumulative side-effects have become so brutal that Nicole could not have continued to work even had her bosses wanted to keep her. She had to make two trips to the ER on consecutive Saturdays after her last Friday chemo treatments, feverish and unresponsive, or else delirious, even after they reduced her dose. We are contemplating terminating the chemo after finishing 9 out of 12 treatments, but regardless of which way we decide to go with that, Nicole's financial straights remain dire and in need of assistance from whoever out there can help.

Nicole has applied for subsidized senior living, but is looking at up to a two year wait, and meanwhile can not afford, on her Social Security alone, the rent in her N. Bend apartment, or to meet payments on her car (which she is currently too feeble to drive, and will need cataract surgery on both eyes---with a $600 upcoming deductible fee for both---to be able to drive at night), and a host of other basic bills. Nicole's kids have been helping her out, and friends have been helping with walking her little dog (the 25 steps leading up to Nicole's apartment are way too steep for her to manage on her own any more) and getting dressed and other everyday things she now can't accomplish on her own, but there is a big gap remaining between what Nicole needs to survive and what she is now receiving. She has a truly wonderful senior advocate social worker, Rachael, in her corner, helping with the housing and other assistance, but it's hard to imagine a way that Nicole can make it until all the assistance is in place, which as said could take up to two years, for the housing, which would be the biggest money-saver. But for now, for the purposes of this fund-raiser, we are focusing on just the next 6 months. Nicole needs another $2,500 minimum monthly on top of her Social Security, to get by; multiply that by 6 and you get $15,000, our tentative goal. We are not sure exactly how Nicole will become self-sufficient by the end of 6 months before all the support systems are in place, but she is a very talented and resourceful woman who has found a way to land on her feet throughout a life full of travails, and it seemed that asking for a longer-lasting financial cushion would have been presumptuous as well as pessimistic. (Not to say that we would stop accepting donations after that figure has been arrived at, should the need persist!) But having the stress of financial worries removed for that time would let Nicole focus on recovering her health, and would be such a tremendous relief and blessing that we would be grateful for, forever. Thanks so much to everyone in advance, we love and deeply appreciate you all!