Hi, friends! My name is Julia. My cancer journey started in August of 2022 when I was hospitalized for unknown abdominal pain. After an exploratory surgery, my medical team was stumped.

I was sent home without a clear diagnosis, but my symptoms, which included severe constipation, nausea, and vomiting persisted. After a colonoscopy and endoscopy came back clear, I was diagnosed with IBS and sent on my way.

My symptoms got worse; to the point that I would go days without eating because I knew the vomiting and constipation that would follow would be horrible. In November of 2022, my medical team decided to remove my gallbladder with the hope that would help.

After the surgery I was often dizzy and couldn't stand long enough to shower most days. The surgery also did nothing to alleviate my earlier symptoms, so I still wasn't eating. This affected my ability to work and I began working from home more and more often. In December of 2022, I was laid off from my job of 5 years along with my entire team.

By February of 2023, I had lost 80 lbs and was hospitalized again for being malnourished, anemic, and septic. After 10 days in the hospital, I was sent home without any kind of plan to keep this from happening again.

In March 2023 I found myself back in the hospital. My previous symptoms still existed, but a new one where it felt like someone was stepping on my chest had suddenly started.

Finally, my medical team saw something strange on my CT scans. In 2005, I had gastric bypass surgery. It's a weight loss surgery that basically bypasses the majority of your stomach and leaves you with a small pouch where your food goes. This helps people to eat less and lose a lot of weight, but the bypassed portion of your stomach is still there, just kind of hanging out and supplying your small intestine with digestive fluids.

My bypassed stomach was HUGE. For some reason, the digestive fluid was no longer moving into my small intestine, and my bypassed stomach was full of this fluid that couldn't get out. My medical team inserted a g-tube into the stomach and drained these fluids.

Suddenly all my symptoms disappeared. I was able to eat again. My nausea went away and my constipation improved. But, I now had a g-tube to alleviate the blockage in my bypassed stomach. After consulting with my medical team, I was told I could either live with the g-tube for the rest of my life, or I could have my bypassed stomach removed and my bile duct directly attached to my small intestine.

I opted for surgery, which took place on July 19th, 2023. The surgery was complicated. What should have taken 2 hours, ended up being 8 hours. My body shut down afterward, and I had multiple organs failing. I'm told all of this was very scary and I almost died, but honestly I don't remember much of anything for the first few days of recovery.

When I was finally lucid again, on July 24th, my doctor came in to inform me that after all of that, they had performed a biopsy on my removed stomach and found cancer. It was already in the lymph nodes of my stomach, and since they didn't know it was there prior to my stomach removal, they knew some of it had been left behind in those lymph nodes.

The problem was, now I had 3 JP drains and 2 chest tubes because of surgery complications. I was in no position to begin any kind of treatment for my cancer and more surgery was out of the question. I was in the hospital until mid August, almost a month after being admitted for my surgery in July. I had the JP drains until October.

By the time I was fully healed and they were able to scan me and formulate a treatment plan, my cancer had moved into my peritoneal lymph nodes. It's now considered stage 4 and my prognosis isn't great. I've not worked in almost a year, and my cobra insurance will end in June 2024.

With treatment, there is a possibility that I can live for several more years, but it will be expensive, and I don't know if I will be able to work through treatment yet. Any donations would be hugely appreciated, but if you don't have anything to spare, I completely understand. A share of this post and a prayer to whatever higher power you believe in is also appreciated.

Thank you for your help! Julia fighting!