My name is Lorie Boyd, and I am a friend and colleague of Victoria Nicolaisen’ s. Victoria is a friend, a sister, a daughter, a wife and most importantly a mother to 2 wonderful boys, Hunter, and Logan. As many of you know 5 years ago, Victoria was diagnosed with Stage 3 Colon Cancer and has been fighting every day since.

What many of you don’t know is that Victoria has had 5 surgeries, 10 rounds of radiation and 68 rounds of Chemotherapy and her cancer progressed to Stage IV. One year ago she entered a promising trial. Unfortunately, her body rejected the treatment, it ended up attacking her pancreas landing her in ICU for 5 days and adding a diagnosis of Diabetic to her already complex medical situation.

Recently , Victoria has had a bigger fight than the Cancer at the forefront, you see Victoria’s insurance has been denying treatment, denying scans to see if her cancer has advanced or metastasized to other areas, denying the necessities to keep fighting. At a time when Victoria should be focused on fighting the cancer, which has in fact metastasized (liver, stomach), she instead spends countless hours on the phone fighting to have the treatment she needs and stressing about how she will cover the thousands of dollars it costs out of pocket because as the insurance company says, “no clinical need” “diagnosis doesn’t require”. The scan and treatments that have not been covered are currently over $30,000 and her current co-pay for her monthly meds is $1623.12.

I say that many of you don’t know the details for 2 reasons. 1) Through all this Victoria has maintained her FT job, in addition to running an online boutique on top of the day-to-day busy schedules of two teenage boys 2) Victoria is very private and never wants to be seen as “the girl with cancer” – and would never ask for help on her own which is why she will initially be mad at me for doing this.

Victoria and family are all too familiar with Cancer and what it can do, she lost her mother from Pancreatic Cancer a mere 10 months before her own diagnosis. I would love to take away the stress of the financial burden and let Victoria fight the real enemy “Cancer” and stop fighting insurance and big pharma.

Victoria has a fierce spirit and is an inspiration to so many people. Please consider donating and helping Victoria fight stage IV colon cancer, so her focus is on her health and her family. If you cannot make a financial contribution, please consider sharing this with your social media network of friends and family.

In the words of Victoria “Fighter like my mama to inspire my boys”