Aimee’s Breast Cancer Fight

With cancer, we all feel helpless on how to help our friends, family, or loved ones when we learn of their diagnosis. We all want to offer support, but often do not know how, other than with our thoughts and prayers.  We recently learned that our friend and loved one, Aimee Lively, was diagnosed with Stage 3 Breast Cancer.

 

Aimee is one of the strongest people we know.  She has raised a very loving and smart 13 year old, as a single mom.  Her family has always been a major priority in her life, so when Daylan was born, that didn’t change. She only became stronger as a mother. She loves being a “boy mom”.  She has done everything she can to give Daylan all he needs and has made sure his dad is an important part of his life as well.  Aimee has always put her son’s needs before her own.  That’s just how she was raised and how she has always been, putting others before herself. She is the person who will give her last dollar to the homeless person on the corner or will stop 8am traffic for a mama duck and her ducklings to get across the street safely (true story)..this is just who she is.

 

However, this past year has been one of the toughest years for Aimee and her entire family. Aimee lost her beautiful mom a year ago to pancreatic cancer. By the time they found out, her mom was already at stage 4 in her battle. She tried to fight it the best she could, but sadly, she passed away only 25 days after receiving her diagnosis.  As you can imagine, Aimee used a lot of her PTO to be with her mom and family during that time.  Aimee has faced many battles since this time, not only dealing with her own grief, her son’s grief, and family’s grief, she had to have a significant surgery in March of this year. She had a Parotidectomy, the removal of a tumor on the right side of her face.  Luckily, the tumor was benign and was able to safely be removed during surgery. But as you can imagine, this was an unexpected medical bill, on top of having to take time off to recover as well.  Still recovering from some of the side effects of that surgery, Aimee started having some other medical concerns as well. After seeing multiple doctors and having several tests done, she got the devastating news that she now has Stage 3 Breast Cancer. It is a rare and aggressive form of inflammatory cancer. The word CANCER alone is scary enough to hear, but knowing it took your mom’s life a year before, is devastating.

 

Now our friend and loved one must face her own battle of cancer. She has a very long and tough road ahead of her.  After she gets her port placed on 6/16/22, she will start 6 months of chemo. After this, she will have surgery for a mastectomy and then radiation for 6 weeks, and then on to the removal of her left breast and a double reconstructive surgery. The doctors are expecting this could all take up to 18 months to get through.

It will be a difficult year and a half for her, not only with her health, but financially as well. Aimee has been a Social Worker/Case Manager for over 20 years, always helping others in need. She has been serving our elderly and others on disability by setting up services needed in their homes, to help them remain safely at home instead of having to resort to living in a nursing home. She loves her patients and always goes above and beyond to help them in any way she can. Unfortunately, her job is a contract job though, so if she doesn’t work, she doesn’t get paid without PTO days, which have already been exhausted. I know this is a major concern for this single mama. She would never ask, so we are asking for her. She is going to have days that are worse than others, and already has so much to worry about, finances shouldn’t be one of them. We all know that medical bills can add up quickly, but there are other expenses as well that a single mom just can’t prepare for. I understand that some may not want to give through gofundme because of the service charges, but they are well known for successful donations, so we decided to use them, but we will have optional ways for people to support Aimee as well that will be listed in our posts! If you are unable to donate at this time, please feel free to share this as well! Also please feel free to leave a memory you have of Aimee or some uplifting, encouraging words to help keep up her spirits up during this difficult journey.  We will try to leave updates here as well on her recovery process.