Supporting Gwenneth's Battle Against Terminal Lung Cancer

When my wife, Gwenneth, was first diagnosed with lung cancer in 2023, I had hoped everything would be all right. Much like my own kidney cancer two years before that, it had been detected early and incidentally - they had been scanning for something else when they found it. Caught before it was even symptomatic, still in its infancy. Her surgery went more smoothly than mine, and, as an eternal optimist, I hoped that we were done with both our cancers, that this difficult chapter, latest in a sequence of difficult chapters, was closed.

Just over a year later, to find out that the cancer has returned, that it has metastasized to the pleura, the lining of the lungs, and that it's untreatable, and that so little time is left, an average of 12 months, even with chemotherapy and immunotherapy... devastating is too gentle of a word.

We have three surviving children, 19, 14, and 10, and they need their mother. I lost my own mother just ten years ago, and I felt even then at 36, I was too young. As a homemaker, she has been a foundational pillar in their upbringing, and a central presence in their lives. She won't get to see them continue to grow and thrive, and become the great people that I know they will become because of her guidance. My wife and I have been married for half my life, and she is the first and only woman I have ever loved - I don't even know who I will be without her. And greatest of all, I feel a sadness for her lost time - that she will not get to finish all the little motions of living that she was in the middle of - not just as a mother or a wife, but as a human being with her own hopes and dreams.

With the time we have left, we're trying our best to focus on "today," every day. We're looking to help the children make some final happy memories that they can carry with them the rest of their life, and prepare them for what we have always made clear to them was inevitable - for all things, all lives, have an ending - but is also far too soon.

Any resources will make this difficult journey easier. The funds will be used to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses, transportation costs, missed days of work for when she and our children need my support greatest. Additionally, they will be used to help make lasting final memories of good times for our children to carry with them once their mother can no longer be with them, while her condition is still good enough to do so. Finally, if there is any left, the remaining funds will be used for palliative end-of-life care and funeral expenses, and additional support as our children's lives take this momentous shift.