People dream of a love like the one my parents have. Since my mother was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer on July 9th my father has barely left her side.

The day before, at a coffee roaster with a client, someone handed me a can of coffee called Whoop Ass. I had no idea the very next day, we’d need to open a can of that on cancer.

Here’s what that looked like:

We flew to the hospital in Wyoming and asked every question we could think of. Blood clots in my mother’s lungs made flying too dangerous and caused a mini stroke. So we rented an RV, hired a friend of ours who is a professional driver, and hauled her 1,375 miles to MD Anderson in Houston, one of the top cancer hospitals in the world for 35 years running, hand-feeding her and carrying her any time she needed to get up.

We checked her into the ER, got my father set up at the Rotary House Hotel connected to the hospital by skybridge, and started the tests. Blood work, biopsies, CT scans, MRIs, more tests… the list is exhaustive. Then chemo: medicine harsh enough the hope is it kills the cancer before it kills you.

And time. Every day that passes, the bills are racking up. Every day that passes, my dad’s not at Menards earning a paycheck.

It’s another day measured in moments as he watches my mother’s heart monitor slowly ticking onward.

Cancer is brutal. But what’s more brutal is the thought of my father spending their 53rd wedding anniversary, August 17th, alone with only a memory.

None of us are going to let that happen. Not my mother. Not my father. Not my brother or his wife. Not my husband. Not me. Not my sister or the rest of our family or his boss or their community in Wyoming where they lived for almost 50 years. Not while there’s a shred of fight left in our bodies.

Fight with us.

This fund will cover over $12,500 in transport fees, $21,000 in short and long term lodging, $4,000 in medical therapy costs, $12,000 in daily living costs for 6 months, and give my father a cushion for the income he’s losing while he’s at her side instead of at work.

Thank you for helping my father fight for the love of his life and for helping give them the chance to celebrate 53 years.

Together.