Support Michael Hathaway's Cancer Battle

Hello. My name is Joan and I am Michael Hathaway's mom. Recently, Michael was diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma on his tongue. It is pretty advanced, and he is going to need an extensive surgery that is going to be scheduled hopefully within the next week. They need to remove a portion of his tongue and harvest muscle from either his forearm or thigh to reconstruct it. They are also removing some lymph nodes from Mike's neck.

He will be in the hospital for anywhere from 2-8 weeks, and aftercare may involve chemotherapy and/or radiation, as well as speech and physical therapy. We're not sure yet. It depends on what they find during surgery. As you can see, everything is kind of up in the air right now. He has appointments coming up that will give us more information, and I will update this GoFundMe as we go through this process.

What we do know for sure is that Michael is going to be out of work for a while and he's going to have a lot of medical bills. Any help will be very much appreciated and desperately needed. Mike is still on his dad's insurance, thankfully, but between co-pays, deductibles, and the start of the new insurance year being July 1st, he's still going to be looking at at least $14,000 in medical bills. Not to mention loss of wages for at least 3 months after surgery while he heals and learns to use his new tongue.

Michael and his long-time girlfriend, Nehemia Calixte, just got engaged. They are young and happy and ready to face this challenge together. I just don't want them to worry about the financial side of this diagnosis. I wish his father and I could help more, but we're unable to. I can be there for him physically through all of this, but we don't have the money to cover these upcoming expenses. This is why I'm setting up this GoFundMe page.

So please, any help given will be so very much appreciated. And if you can't give, please share this fundraiser to your page. Let's spread the word and help Mike through this rough time. Thanks so much.