Mariah's Journey

Most of you know me as Mariah Candelaria, recently married to Jarrod Ruiz. If you know me, you may already know my story. If you don't, here is a summary. I was a little hesitant to start a GoFundMe page, but this journey is about to become a lot tougher for a while, and I have come to realize that this will require a team. I was originally diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma in March of 2008. I relapsed with Recurrent Hodgkin's Lymphoma in January of 2010, just one month after I had my second daughter, Mia. I had an almost 5 year old at time as well, Ileana. After battling what felt like hell, and surviving chemo, radiation and a stem cell harvest, I was granted remission status again! Life has gotten so much better over the past 9 years. I am normally the person you know as the outdoorsy, loves traveling, musical person. Fibromyalgia isn't easy, but I have been so much more grateful just to be alive. Grateful to still be able to dance, sing, hike and enjoy my family and the world. After 9 years, I started to feel symptoms again, and knew it was back. This time, it will require an out of state autologous stem cell transplant in Houston. I started chemo at the beginning of March, and will complete at least 2 to 4 more cycles before this process happens. Starting next month, I will need to travel to Houston to seek treatment at MD Anderson, and will need to continue to travel to and from NM throughout treatment. Once I get a clear PET Scan, I will be sent to Houston for the transplant. I will be out there for at least 6 weeks. As you can imagine, this is not very easy, and as much as I have wanted to hold off from asking, I decided to pray and talk to my husband and close friends and family about it. I decided it was finally time to ask for help. We all decided it would be best to take a leave from work and focus on health and healing. I know we all have challenges, and it's not easy for anyone, but anything helps and will be appreciated from the bottom of our hearts. If you would like to help in any other ways and know us personally, please contact us. This will be a long term relationship and process with the NM and Houston teams.  My family and I greatly appreciate any and all help along this journey. Thank you.