(Baby) Kate Gorman

26 years old.  You’re not supposed to find out you have cancer. You’ve already fought it once when you were a child.  And now you have a different form rear its ugly head and threaten to take away things in your future. Things like children.  This month our dear friend Kate Gorman was diagnosed with breast cancer. A disease often assumed to afflict women beyond childbearing years.  This in turn has put her in the impossible position to go through egg harvesting before chemotherapy in order to preserve her ability to have biological children.  The emotions are high, but the financial burden is crippling to someone at her stage of life, in her profession. $13,000.

 

Can you consider for a minute finding out you-

Have cancer?

Must undergo body altering surgery?

Need to submit to medication that will make you so sick in order to stave off a worse offender?

Will have to go through hormone therapy to produce eggs that will be harvested and frozen for a future date in the hopes of someday having children?

Have no choice but to potentially go bankrupt in seeking to save your life and preserve part of your future?

 

What if you found out on top of the mounting medical costs despite having ‘adequate’ insurance-that ‘fertility treatments’ are not covered in these costs? Not one cent of it.  For those of you who have endured them, know that on top of the trauma of the physical pain and emotions of going through fertility treatments- the cost is the cherry on top. When you think you are supposed to be working to pay off student loans, save for a future with your significant other-you are handed a life altering diagnosis.

Kate is wonderful in light of the hand she has been dealt.  Or maybe because of it.  She sees the good and strives to be a beacon in a dark world.  This makes those who know her even a little more devastated for her diagnosis.  In a perfect world, things like this don’t happen to good people.   The Holy truth is that we do not live in a perfect world-evidence of that is everywhere-BUT we have the free will to make it better.  WE get to decide everyday what that looks like in our lives and just ONE of the many ways you can choose to make the world a better place is to help the neighbor beside you.  Someone who may never be able to repay you but in return will take the good done for them and repay it into the world a thousand-fold.  We get to steward the financial gifts we have been given to support a friend or stranger in need, because if you were in her shoes- you would need it.  Would you do that today?  If you know Kate? Even if you don’t? Because you believe that the world is made better by a helping hand?