Secure a Future for Alexandra’s Family Amid Cancer Battle

My name is Alexandra Thornton. I have incurable de novo Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, and I need your help to save my family.

In March of 2022, my son Marcus saved my life. Wrestling as one does with a 6-year-old, he accidentally hit my right breast and drew my attention to a lump that I had somehow missed. My mother passed in May of 2020 from lung cancer, and in the time that followed, it felt like grief was literally wearing me down. When I discovered the lump, all of a sudden there was a much scarier potential explanation for my exhaustion and other symptoms. What followed were months that involved an initial diagnosis of Stage 2 cancer; an oncologist who felt a PET scan was not necessary because I was only 43; a second opinion that thought the opposite for the same reason; a PET scan; and the correct diagnosis that found not only the tumors in my breast and auxiliary lymph nodes but the one in my vertebrae as well.

In an instant, I went from a tough but hopeful prognosis to an incurable one with a deeply uncertain future and a less than 1 in 10 chance of survival past 5 years. My oncologist was hopeful despite the statistics because I was young, I wasn’t weakened by earlier cancer treatments, and several new Stage 4 protocols were recently available. All I wanted was more time with my loved ones. By the time the treatment plan was approved, a second PET scan revealed that the first spinal tumor spread to another vertebra, and a completely separate tumor developed higher in my spine. That was as far as the cancer got before we started to beat it back, with 2 rounds of radiation in 6 months, hormonal therapy every two months, and daily chemo every day in the two years since. Most of my tumors are gone or inert. For the first time since my diagnosis, I can think of a future, but it is a bleak one unless I can get help.

We exhausted our savings, have debt from my treatment and associated expenses, and have fallen behind on bills. All of this is bad enough, but my treatment will continue as long as I am alive; one of my meds costs more in two months than our yearly rent without insurance. I have 6 other medications as well.

Any help given would first go to make sure my family is protected, and then to paying off our debts. Anything over our goal would go towards the establishment of a non-profit to help metastatic breast cancer patients meet expenses.