In late January, my aunt Lana went to the ER for something minor. The doctors told her two things. What she came in for was nothing. And her blood counts were so dangerously low she needed an emergency transfusion.

The diagnosis was hemolytic anemia, a rare autoimmune disease where her own immune system attacks and destroys her red blood cells. And to top it off, she has the rarer form: the cold type. Cold drinks can set it off. Even the transfusions that keep her alive have to be warmed first.

The first round of treatment was months of high-dose steroids and weekly antibody infusions. It didn't work. Now she does it all at once, one week out of every month: blood draw Monday, antibody infusion Tuesday, chemotherapy Wednesday, and a shot on Thursday to coax her white blood cells back. She's losing her hair. There's no guarantee this round works either.

So here's the part that should make you angry.

Lana has worked her whole life. Twelve years at one company until a layoff at 60. Two years of applications to land the next job. The market is not kind to workers over 50. A seasonal tax job with no benefits. She even worked airport security in her sixties, on her feet all day through a Minnesota winter, because it came with health insurance. Days before she was due to start yet another new job this February, the ER visit happened. Weeks after she started, the job was gone. Its health benefits had never kicked in.

Her old coverage ended in March. Her new plan couldn't start until May. For seven weeks, in the middle of treatment for a life-threatening illness, she had no insurance at all. One hospital stay produced a bill with five figures on it.

She's 15 months from Medicare. She makes "too much" for Medicaid, because she collects Social Security. The COBRA paperwork she was owed simply never arrived. So she did what she always does. She handled it. She bought her own insurance. It costs $915 a month. That's with a subsidy she could lose at any income review, which would push it past $1,400.

For three months, friends quietly paid those premiums so she could keep getting treated. They can't anymore.

You should know something about my aunt. She has spent more than a decade fighting for universal healthcare, for other people. Organizing, showing up, banging the drum, back when she was healthy and insured. Now she's the one in the gap she always warned was there.

When we talked about this page she told me, "I hate being in this position." This is a woman who won't let you carry her plate to the sink. Asking is agony for her. So she isn't asking — I am.

Where every dollar goes:

Health insurance premiums until Medicare begins in October 2027: up to $1,500 a month for 15 months

Medical bills insurance won't cover, including the five-figure hospital bill

The legal and administrative fees it takes to keep those medical debts from burying her

Funds go directly to Lana through GoFundMe's beneficiary system. Not to me, no middleman. And if we raise more than her documented medical costs require, the excess goes back to donors. Every dollar here is for getting her to the other side of this.

You can give once, or you can give monthly. Her premium comes due every single month, so when you donate you can choose a one-time gift or a smaller recurring one, and cancel it whenever you need to.

If you can't give, share it. Lana spent years fighting for people she never met. Be one of the strangers who fights back for her.