My mother, Annalise, went to the ER 13 days ago with the symptoms of abdominal bloating, extreme swelling, quickly feeling full when she ate, exhaustion and constipation and having a hard time breathing. She had started to feel these symptoms a month earlier and it got worse and worse each day. She held off going to the doctor because she does not have insurance. It finally got so bad she gave in and went to the doctor (who said he would see her for $80 cash) earlier in the week and was told she had constipation and sent home with Lactulose to treat it. By Friday, after working the whole week cleaning houses, she could hardly walk and knew something was very wrong. She had her husband take her to the ER around 4pm and by 8pm that night was told it looks like cancer after they did a cat scan and some bloodwork. She was immediatly addmitted.

The next day they did addional testing and that's when we heard the word ovarian cancer and was told they could see a 6 1/2 inch tumor and her stomach was filled up with liquid which was why she was having a hard time breathing . By that point they knew it was on the ovaries and she would need a hysterectomy and the tumor removed. They drained 7 lbs of liquid and it immediately started filling up again. Then, she was then taken by abulance to a different hospital that specializes in cancer. By Monday we knew they had scheduled surgery to be done on Tuesday. The surgery ended up lasting 4 1/2 hours and they found the tumor had matasisized on her bladder, bowels, ovaries, fallopen tubes, uterous, stomach lining and small intestine. They removed her lymph nodes but will not know if they had cancer on them until the patholody report comes in. They did a hysterectomy and said they removed 100% of the cancer that they could find. They also did chemo during the surgery (soaked her stomach for 20 minutes) which is equivalent to having up to 6 chemo treatments. They also had to have an ileoscopy because the cancer was on her intestine. Which means she will have a pouch outside her stomach for up to a year. The day after surgery her potassium ended up being dangerouly high and they were concerned she was having kidney faluire or would have cardiac arrest. They quickly moved her to ICU. This was extremly scary. By Friday night her potassuim had gotten into a normal range and she was able to be moved back to a normal room. She has started to eat food again but is not always able to keep it down. As of today she is still in the hospital and her potassium now is too low,  her soduim is to low also and her electrolyes are not in the normail range.  Also she has been throwing up about 3 hours after she eats each meal. We had hoped she could get out of the hospital today but that's not looking like an option.

Financially this is a huge burden to carry. My mom does not have insurance and is trying to get some. She was deneid medicaid because her husband has a job. Unfortually my moms housecleaning income made up half of their income. They are already behind on bills and have no idea how they are going to pay for not only the hospial bill, but even more importanly the doctors appt.'s to come and medicine they will prescribe, she has to have blood thinning shots everyday for a month after she gets out of the hospital and the doctor said those alone are up to $100 a shot. She will start Chemo once her wound in her stomach heals and again she has no idea how she will pay for this even when she does get insurance through the state. I'm currently working on this.

We are still waiting on her pathogy report which will tell us more about the cancer. We spoke to 2 of the surgeons that assisted in the surgery a couple of days ago and we were told most likely its stage 4 ovarian cancer. Please be praying for my mom and if you can help out in any way financially it would be a huge blessing.