Stg 4 Cancer • Help a Mom Visit her Daughter

My name is Mark Sunshine. I've organized this GoFundMe to aide in reuniting my love Lakota (LB) with her daughter Roo who lives far away. This is a trip that was planned much earlier but was delayed by the pandemic. They've not seen each other since 2018 when LB came up north for treatments. Recent developments have made this trip a urgent priority. All LB's funds are taken up by payments toward medical bills and those are super-expensive.

LB has been battling Stage 4 Cancer since 2015. It started out as Breast cancer, and metastasized along the way, now having settled in her lung. Lakota (or simply LB) was diagnosed shortly after I secured a position at Amazon, where I have been employed for the past 7 years.

Working at Amazon has me spending 10 hours or more at the job, 4 days a week. At night after I come home, I cannot say I "fall asleep"-- it's more like I shut off, passing out after dinner. We barely see each other during the week.

I have to take a UNPAID Leave of Absence from my job in order to make this happen. Lately it is a very, very difficult balance. Amazon offers much OT but I really can't take the overtime -- because it'd deny me more quality time with LB. It's all about time.

"As a mother, you can talk to your child everyday, text, send photos, but there's nothing that can replace an actual hug. It's been 3 long years. I want her to see me, in the best state I can be, for us to sit, laugh, perhaps not oceanside now, but in the Blue Ridge Mountains of NC . It would be wonderful." -- LB, from her Facebook

The funds acquired via GoFundMe are slated to make this trip possible without absolutely upsetting our fiscal "eco-system", enabling us to return, getting her back to treatment BUT as she sits in that chair, the Doxorubicin entering her veins, she can look back on her seeing her daughter, laughter and sights seen -- and not focus too much on the ever-present issue of mortality as treatments begin to have less effect.

Every one who can afford to give something toward this cause will receive a very special piece of hand-made art from me ( or LB! ) -- because it means THAT much to me, to us.

Thank you for clicking on this -- let me leave you with this adorable photo of Lakota and Roo. As LB told me, it was taken in a photo booth, one that simply snapped 4 pictures. Look at these two -- they did not PLAN their facial expressions! They just came out that way, nearly identical. I share this picture with Lakota's permission, because to me it shows how deeply close they are.

We will be getting her down to see her baby girl and that is a fact.