The Merri-Go-Round of Life

Please help! My family and I are currently living in Oakland, NJ, part of the FLOW area. This year has not been the easiest year to live in this state of uncertainty. We are severely behind in our mortgage payments. In fact, the bank doesn't want to negotiate anything; they want full payment or told us to leave our house. As of now, we have half of the funds and need to raise the remaining outstanding balance of $25,000 by next week. We are past due on our utility bills with shut off coming any day. The balance includes late fees, penalties, and lawyer fees. As a family, we’ve fundraised with help from friends and our local church, made things, and sold some of our valuables. My mom is the caregiver of my 87-year-old grandma with stage 4 Parkinson's disease who is bedridden, and my mom has stage 3 breast cancer with inoperable tumors too close to her heart. This is just the beginning of this wild roller coaster ride of the year. Here is my mother’s unbelievable journey of where it all started.

At 24, she had surgery to remove a large tumor from her spine, but during the surgery, they decided to cut the tumor they thought was 99% benign. It was possible that she would be paralyzed. The pathology report came back with positive results for cancer, a word she really didn't know. All of her friends and family came to see her. Her roommate thought she was famous with so many people visiting. After a weeks-long stay, she demanded to go home and was released. She was then referred to Dr. Weintraub in Hackensack, and he recommended a colleague of his, Dr. Meyers in NYC, for a consultation. She had a port and had her first chemotherapy treatment that night. She lost all her hair and went home two weeks later. There was no time to think. The word cancer was so difficult to understand. I couldn't even imagine how scary it was for her world to turn upside down in an instant.

As the merri-go-round turns, and turns again into 2015, Dr. DeAngelo from MSKCC Baskin Ridge removed a grapefruit-sized benign tumor that wrapped around my mom's pancreas. During surgery, they removed her spleen. The doctor said it was the largest tumor he ever saw and it was red and mean-looking. Mom named it Lucifer! I remember going to NYC with my grandma and friend to pick her up. It took approximately a year for her to recover. The scar remains from one side of her body to the other. It looked like a shark bite.

As it turns into the year of COVID, when times were certainly uncertain, that damn word "cancer" came back into my mother's life once again. This time, stage 2 breast cancer. One day, my mother was talking with her mother and brushed against what she thought was her boob only to get a very sinking feeling of despair yet again. She confirmed that what she actually felt was a lump, the size of a gumball. The next day, the doctor's office prescribed my mother to Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, NJ for a biopsy. At that time, her doctor was on vacation. My mother knew she had to advocate for herself. At that point, the merri-go-round started to go round and round and out of control. My mother frantically called MSKCC in Montvale to find an oncologist. She was treated with a year of chemotherapy and radiation, something she promised that she would never do again. My mother's friend told her that she's not doing it for herself, she is doing this fight for her kids.

Here we are at a current revolution. It's back! This time it presents itself as stage 3 breast cancer, after the insurance company denied her follow-up PET scan last November. Maybe this part of the story could be different. My mom has 5 tumors in total that include 3 inoperable tumors close to her heart. She's hopeful that modern medicine (Kisqali) will shrink and a miracle will happen. Taking this medicine has not been easy for my mother. She has her good days; for example, on October 25, my mother walked MetLife for a breast cancer event. Thousands of people walked that day and perhaps you passed my mother on the walk. The bad days are an understatement. Constantly crying from the pain, she's nauseous as can be, no energy to do anything but just try to rest. Recently, my mother has partially torn her rotator cuff, completely immobilizing her left arm.

Now spinning out of control and into the holiday season, it would be a miracle if my family and I are still living in this house. Every dollar raised from this GoFundMe will be used toward the mortgage. This money will help save an 87-year-old bedridden grandmother, my warrior mother who is a 4-time cancer fighter who could use help herself, a 57-year-old father who has an immune deficiency (Common Variable Immunoglobulin Deficiency, CVID), and my brother who this year was a passenger in a freak car accident and had a tibial plateau fracture and is going to need a second surgery soon. As you can imagine, it has not been easy and is very overwhelming, but the merri-go-round always continues to spin. Thank you for reading and your consideration in this most desperate time.