Ha Nguyen

On May 7th, 2025, at the age of 17 and 19, my little brother and I became orphans.

Throughout our lives, our family has faced a series of losses. We always had each other, until suddenly, it was just us two. Here is our story:

6 years ago, our dad had a stroke. Left on an aspirin for 36 hours, our dad fell victim to medical malpractice that led to his left side being completely paralysed. Unable to walk, talk, eat, or live the life he used to live, he became a shadow of himself trapped in a body that betrayed him.

4 years ago, we lost our grandfather. It was sudden—the Hepatitis B hidden in his liver had presented itself and salvaged his liver completely. The death of our grandpa became our first experience with death.

2 months later, my mom lost her job and we lost our apartment. We moved into our grandparents’ house. Not a week later after moving into grandma’s house, our family car explodes on the side of the road. No more car, no more apartment.

2 years ago, we lost our dad to the complications from his stroke. His body couldn’t take it anymore—all the midnight hospital runs, his failing organs, his inability to live life without his body failing him. The lack of health insurance made it impossible to seek help given our financial situation. He became our second death in the family. At 17 and 15, my brother and I learned what it was like to be the children of a single mom.

Our mom, who was the sole breadwinner for our family before, no longer had a job to fund the medical expenses. My brother had just started his freshman year, and I had started my junior year. So to fund the funeral, the burial, and the grave, our mom took out whatever she could to put our dad to rest.

Then it happened.

8 months after our dad’s burial, she’d told us there was a growing tumor in her left breast. Our mom had gotten used to a life of not being a caretaker anymore after spending 4 years caring for my dad. But now, she became the one needing care. Without a job and without health insurance, she was unable to seek the help she needed until it was too late.

By the time she found out it was triple-negative breast cancer, it had already spread to her lymph nodes. That day in January 2024 became the start of months fighting her cancer, trying new chemotherapy treatments, surgeries, anything to stop it from taking her life.

Like our dad, our mom’s body betrayed her too. After her first radiation treatment, she recovered and her hair grew back. But just one month later, her cancer returned. The doctors had to continue radiation therapy. This time the medicine was stronger. It inadvertently killed off all her white and red blood cells. Because of this, my mother was constantly dizzy and had to go to emergency. There, they discovered she was anemic. The hospital had to give her blood transfusions.

During one of those transfusions, she unfortunately contracted cytomegalovirus—the virus that became the final fatal blow to her already weakened immune system. When they gave my mother her first blood transfusion, she received infected blood.

Infected blood transfusions are a 1 in a million occurrence, yet in some unlucky turn of fate, our mom became one of those cases. The infected blood transfusion taxed her body heavily, worsening the impact of chemotherapy and the cancer on her body.

Now, 1 week ago, we lost our mom to breast cancer.

Our mom fought for us to the very end. She knew she would be leaving behind her two kids, orphaned and unprepared in this world. In her final moments with us, she apologized to my brother and I—not for dying, but for leaving us to navigate a world that had already taken so much from us by ourselves.

We are more than just another story of loss. We are two siblings, 17 and 19, who have watched our world crumble piece by piece over the past six years. We've gone from a complete family to orphans, from financial stability to mounting medical debts, from having a support system to being entirely on our own.

Our education, our future, and our ability to simply survive now hang in the balance. My brother is still in high school, and I'm trying to figure out how to be both an older sister and a guardian. We have immediate needs—housing, food, basic necessities—and long-term concerns like education costs, funeral costs and medical bills left behind.

We're reaching out because we need help to stay afloat, to stay together, and to have a fighting chance at the future our parents worked so hard to give us. Every donation, no matter the size, will help us rebuild from this devastating loss and honor the memory of our parents who fought so hard for us until the very end.

Any support you can offer will go toward:

Immediate living expenses and housing security

Outstanding medical bills and funeral costs

Educational expenses for both of us

Legal fees for guardianship arrangements

Basic necessities as we establish our new normal

We are grateful for any help you can provide, whether it's a donation or simply sharing our story. Thank you for taking the time to read about our journey and for considering helping two siblings stay together and find their way forward.