Quana Madison Cancer Debt Fund
Donation protected
I (Jonise Roberts) am starting this GoFundme because my friend should not have to die because she can not afford treatment. She should not have to suffer daily from debilitating and painful disabilities due to inability to afford care that could help significantly.
Chereta Quána Madison is one of the most beautiful humans you will ever encounter. She has a spirit that lights up the room. No matter what she is going through she will always take the time to help someone in need. I have had the pleasure of working with her on a collaborative arts-based youth participatory action research project to support refugee youth and highly traumatized youth and encourage youth be leaders, researchers and community advocates.
She is the kind of person that would give her last $1.00 to someone in need. She nourishes others with her beautiful warm and her ability to always see the sliverlining in life.
She is dealing with complex debilitating medical issues that are comprimising her immune system, lungs, heart, liver, nerves and bones.
In the past 10 months she has had 8 female cancer surgeries related to ovarian, uterine and breast cancers. She had an emergency hysterectomy (removal of uterus), oophorectomy (removal of ovaries/fallopian tubes), double masectomies (removal of breasts) , breast reconstruction, necrosis (death of cells), corrective surgery to manage the necrosis, breast reconstruction surgery phase 2 and life-saving surgery from vaginal dehisence and evisceration. Her abdominal cavity became compromised and opened up. She began to give birth to her bowels.
In December 2016 she required another surgery for breast reconstruction because her immune system attacked the masectomy sites.
The trauma from her treatments activated serious autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue and nerve damage that is incurable. She most recently experienced her roughest recovery as her body is struggling to fight.
Quána's body is weak but her spirit is strong! She currently has no appetite, dropped over 20 pounds in a few weeks, has yellowing of eyes and skin, tremors in both sides of her body, chronic pain and body malaise, difficulty eating, vomitting blood and bile regularly, brain fog and other painful problems daily.
Now due to troubling symptoms she is being evaluated for pancreatic, liver and now thyroid cancers and other autoimmune complications compromising major organs.
She needs cognitive rehabilitation and other testings to help learn the root cause of these problems so appropriate treatment can be administered.
Quana is BRCA1, ATM, NBN positive and is considered very high risk for female cancer reoccurrence and pancreatic cancer.
Even if we all only donate $10.00 it will go a long way towards paying for her medications, necessary evaluations, rehabilitation, various medical treatments and her day to day.
Quána is currently a full time doctoral student, who passionately teaches for the Leadership Studies Program at CU Boulder.
She is a community-based research who supports participatory action research and youth participatory action research through arts-based methodologies. She supports inclusion/diversity advocacy, peacebuilding, and the work the United Nations. She volunteers in her local community to support the United Nations Association of the USA, the UN Foundation Nothing But Nets Campaign to End Malaria.
Quána was a dedicated public school teacher in NYC and then an educator and special education/learning support advocate in Shanghai, China. She fell in love with various aspects of Chinese culture and community. She reveled in the opportunities to be in community with families and colleagues from around the world with multi-layered identities.
Quána decided to get her PHD so she may take the skills, knowledges, and understandings she learns, to offer it in support of community organizations, businesses, private organizations, military and governments that seek genuine social responsibility and mutually beneficial, sustainable and fruitful community relations.
Quána does not qualify for medicaid. Yet, she does not make enough money to pay for doctor appointments, medications, food, rent, clothing and hidden costs that come with living with disabilities--despite having student health insurance.
Her battles with ovarian, uterine and breast cancers left her financial destitute and drowning in medical debt and debts from trying to survive while fiercely battling cancers.
Yet, she still strives to not just stay alive, but to thrive. She is determined to be a light-bearer, everyday-saint and bridge-walker in the ways she is able, in the spaces she is blessed to be apart of.
Continuing her PHD program with her new disabilities and health challenges has been rough. She has dealt with on-going discouragement, discrimination and a lack of understanding against her disabilities/ableism and needs as a diverse learner.
Yet, she strives to move forward in hopes that it will help inspire and lead to increasing policies and practices that encourage and support peoples with various kinds of visible and invisible disabilities/abilities to have access to education spaces like PHD programs.
Quana hopes to inspire people to cultivate deeper critical understandings of people living with chronic illnesses, diverse learners and how education spaces could be more trauma sensitive and inclusive of all community members with various abilities (not just students, but staff, administrators, teachers and families and community allies).
Please show your support for Quána by:
1. Liking and following her facebook page "The Avant Garde Black Feminist Scholar" (Quána shares health and inspirational updates daily on this site). The updates include video, pictures, art, writing, and gratitude call outs to various communities. Due to Quána's poor health, it is physically and mentally exhausting to commute 1 hour one way to both work and school. It's difficult to predict if she will have energy to do the things she loves. Quana has turned to art, writing, socratic education of communities and bridge-walking to connect, uplift and support communities she is able.
Even if it is not by her own hands given her body weakness, tremors, muscle spasms and malaise, she finds ways to connect, inspire and support others.
Quana is turning to art, writing, photography, humor, avant garde creativity and love for humanity as a means to transmute her pain and work through the traumas associated with cancer and complex medical patients.
Quana takes time to meditate each day and gives thanks for her body, her life and experiences. Her daily prayer is "...guide me in the thoughts I think, the words I speak and the actions of my hands to do good works for humanity in the ways I am called and able, every day, in each moment."
https://www.facebook.com/theavantgardeblackfeministscholar/
2. Join her network on Linkedin and follower her as an influencer. (Quána values connecting with the amazing light-bearers who are supporting her in all ways. She loves to bridge-walk by connecting good people with other good people who are looking to contribute to communities and humanity). Writing and sharing her voice is helping her have daily strength.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/quanamadison
3. Send a personal message to Quana! It helps! Share a song, a piece of art, a personal story, quote or photo that inspires you. These forms of contact are incredible medicine for the everyday fight. You can use facebook, linkedin pages to connect. Please know that she can be slow on responding due to her brain fog and compromised processing speed and executive functioning skills due to her current medical challenges. Yet, know she will respond and appreciate your efforts.
4. Be on the look out for a special video that will be shared soon, that is meant to shine a little light into the world using art to encourage healing and hope.
Our goal is to share it around the world. Quana loves the saying by the Buddha "Thousands of Candles can be lit by a single candle, and the life of that candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by sharing it."
5. Support Arts & Music Adovcacy for children, youth, adults, communities and yourself. Arts and Music are powerful mediums that support critical thinking and help all human beings embody empathy, emotional processing, healing and creativity. It's a necessary ingredient in remaining humanized and being caring community members and global community advocates who can work across differences, learning from eachother and peace build to work together for great goals.
One of Quana's art's advocacy projects is supporting Phantom Circus. www.phantomcircus.com. She supports them because they focus on empowering performers and communities through the arts. They seek to promote creativity amongst all ages and audiences. Quána has partnered with Phantom Circus to bring arts performances and workshops to local and international communities who would benefit and communities that lack resources and access to the arts.
For special events and corporate events, Phantom takes part of the proceeds to give back to the community. One way Phantom is supporting Quána's cause is by supporting her passion for Refugee Education Advocacy in the US. Phantom has agreed to donate a performance to a public school that does an amazing job supporting refugee children, youth and families in Denver.
By hiring Phantom Circus for special events, you are helping fund arts opportunities for communities with limited access to the arts and peoples who would benefit from the healing and inspirational power of the performing arts. Or if you would like to donate money for a show to bring the arts performance or arts workshop to a local or international community you know would benefit, please contact Phantom Circus. Quána hopes to use her life (no matter how much time she has left) to support communities. In Quána's words "All the amazing doctors, nurses, specialists and EMTs have saved my body multiple times. They are some of my most awesome heros and heroines. But it has been music, singing, dance, art, poetry, narratives, drama and performance that has brought her soul back from the dead, and fuels her inner fire to fight and live with reverence."
I will continue to update this so WE can help save my friend's life, so she can continue to live and advocate for communities, the arts and children and youth. She firmly believes in the power of art therapy and music to help all peoples process trauma and recover from trauma.
Thank you for being light-bearers, everyday-saints and bridge-walkers to Quána. She literately cries tears of joy over the warmth and kindness and faith that people have shown and continue to show.
Chereta Quána Madison is one of the most beautiful humans you will ever encounter. She has a spirit that lights up the room. No matter what she is going through she will always take the time to help someone in need. I have had the pleasure of working with her on a collaborative arts-based youth participatory action research project to support refugee youth and highly traumatized youth and encourage youth be leaders, researchers and community advocates.
She is the kind of person that would give her last $1.00 to someone in need. She nourishes others with her beautiful warm and her ability to always see the sliverlining in life.
She is dealing with complex debilitating medical issues that are comprimising her immune system, lungs, heart, liver, nerves and bones.
In the past 10 months she has had 8 female cancer surgeries related to ovarian, uterine and breast cancers. She had an emergency hysterectomy (removal of uterus), oophorectomy (removal of ovaries/fallopian tubes), double masectomies (removal of breasts) , breast reconstruction, necrosis (death of cells), corrective surgery to manage the necrosis, breast reconstruction surgery phase 2 and life-saving surgery from vaginal dehisence and evisceration. Her abdominal cavity became compromised and opened up. She began to give birth to her bowels.
In December 2016 she required another surgery for breast reconstruction because her immune system attacked the masectomy sites.
The trauma from her treatments activated serious autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue and nerve damage that is incurable. She most recently experienced her roughest recovery as her body is struggling to fight.
Quána's body is weak but her spirit is strong! She currently has no appetite, dropped over 20 pounds in a few weeks, has yellowing of eyes and skin, tremors in both sides of her body, chronic pain and body malaise, difficulty eating, vomitting blood and bile regularly, brain fog and other painful problems daily.
Now due to troubling symptoms she is being evaluated for pancreatic, liver and now thyroid cancers and other autoimmune complications compromising major organs.
She needs cognitive rehabilitation and other testings to help learn the root cause of these problems so appropriate treatment can be administered.
Quana is BRCA1, ATM, NBN positive and is considered very high risk for female cancer reoccurrence and pancreatic cancer.
Even if we all only donate $10.00 it will go a long way towards paying for her medications, necessary evaluations, rehabilitation, various medical treatments and her day to day.
Quána is currently a full time doctoral student, who passionately teaches for the Leadership Studies Program at CU Boulder.
She is a community-based research who supports participatory action research and youth participatory action research through arts-based methodologies. She supports inclusion/diversity advocacy, peacebuilding, and the work the United Nations. She volunteers in her local community to support the United Nations Association of the USA, the UN Foundation Nothing But Nets Campaign to End Malaria.
Quána was a dedicated public school teacher in NYC and then an educator and special education/learning support advocate in Shanghai, China. She fell in love with various aspects of Chinese culture and community. She reveled in the opportunities to be in community with families and colleagues from around the world with multi-layered identities.
Quána decided to get her PHD so she may take the skills, knowledges, and understandings she learns, to offer it in support of community organizations, businesses, private organizations, military and governments that seek genuine social responsibility and mutually beneficial, sustainable and fruitful community relations.
Quána does not qualify for medicaid. Yet, she does not make enough money to pay for doctor appointments, medications, food, rent, clothing and hidden costs that come with living with disabilities--despite having student health insurance.
Her battles with ovarian, uterine and breast cancers left her financial destitute and drowning in medical debt and debts from trying to survive while fiercely battling cancers.
Yet, she still strives to not just stay alive, but to thrive. She is determined to be a light-bearer, everyday-saint and bridge-walker in the ways she is able, in the spaces she is blessed to be apart of.
Continuing her PHD program with her new disabilities and health challenges has been rough. She has dealt with on-going discouragement, discrimination and a lack of understanding against her disabilities/ableism and needs as a diverse learner.
Yet, she strives to move forward in hopes that it will help inspire and lead to increasing policies and practices that encourage and support peoples with various kinds of visible and invisible disabilities/abilities to have access to education spaces like PHD programs.
Quana hopes to inspire people to cultivate deeper critical understandings of people living with chronic illnesses, diverse learners and how education spaces could be more trauma sensitive and inclusive of all community members with various abilities (not just students, but staff, administrators, teachers and families and community allies).
Please show your support for Quána by:
1. Liking and following her facebook page "The Avant Garde Black Feminist Scholar" (Quána shares health and inspirational updates daily on this site). The updates include video, pictures, art, writing, and gratitude call outs to various communities. Due to Quána's poor health, it is physically and mentally exhausting to commute 1 hour one way to both work and school. It's difficult to predict if she will have energy to do the things she loves. Quana has turned to art, writing, socratic education of communities and bridge-walking to connect, uplift and support communities she is able.
Even if it is not by her own hands given her body weakness, tremors, muscle spasms and malaise, she finds ways to connect, inspire and support others.
Quana is turning to art, writing, photography, humor, avant garde creativity and love for humanity as a means to transmute her pain and work through the traumas associated with cancer and complex medical patients.
Quana takes time to meditate each day and gives thanks for her body, her life and experiences. Her daily prayer is "...guide me in the thoughts I think, the words I speak and the actions of my hands to do good works for humanity in the ways I am called and able, every day, in each moment."
https://www.facebook.com/theavantgardeblackfeministscholar/
2. Join her network on Linkedin and follower her as an influencer. (Quána values connecting with the amazing light-bearers who are supporting her in all ways. She loves to bridge-walk by connecting good people with other good people who are looking to contribute to communities and humanity). Writing and sharing her voice is helping her have daily strength.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/quanamadison
3. Send a personal message to Quana! It helps! Share a song, a piece of art, a personal story, quote or photo that inspires you. These forms of contact are incredible medicine for the everyday fight. You can use facebook, linkedin pages to connect. Please know that she can be slow on responding due to her brain fog and compromised processing speed and executive functioning skills due to her current medical challenges. Yet, know she will respond and appreciate your efforts.
4. Be on the look out for a special video that will be shared soon, that is meant to shine a little light into the world using art to encourage healing and hope.
Our goal is to share it around the world. Quana loves the saying by the Buddha "Thousands of Candles can be lit by a single candle, and the life of that candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by sharing it."
5. Support Arts & Music Adovcacy for children, youth, adults, communities and yourself. Arts and Music are powerful mediums that support critical thinking and help all human beings embody empathy, emotional processing, healing and creativity. It's a necessary ingredient in remaining humanized and being caring community members and global community advocates who can work across differences, learning from eachother and peace build to work together for great goals.
One of Quana's art's advocacy projects is supporting Phantom Circus. www.phantomcircus.com. She supports them because they focus on empowering performers and communities through the arts. They seek to promote creativity amongst all ages and audiences. Quána has partnered with Phantom Circus to bring arts performances and workshops to local and international communities who would benefit and communities that lack resources and access to the arts.
For special events and corporate events, Phantom takes part of the proceeds to give back to the community. One way Phantom is supporting Quána's cause is by supporting her passion for Refugee Education Advocacy in the US. Phantom has agreed to donate a performance to a public school that does an amazing job supporting refugee children, youth and families in Denver.
By hiring Phantom Circus for special events, you are helping fund arts opportunities for communities with limited access to the arts and peoples who would benefit from the healing and inspirational power of the performing arts. Or if you would like to donate money for a show to bring the arts performance or arts workshop to a local or international community you know would benefit, please contact Phantom Circus. Quána hopes to use her life (no matter how much time she has left) to support communities. In Quána's words "All the amazing doctors, nurses, specialists and EMTs have saved my body multiple times. They are some of my most awesome heros and heroines. But it has been music, singing, dance, art, poetry, narratives, drama and performance that has brought her soul back from the dead, and fuels her inner fire to fight and live with reverence."
I will continue to update this so WE can help save my friend's life, so she can continue to live and advocate for communities, the arts and children and youth. She firmly believes in the power of art therapy and music to help all peoples process trauma and recover from trauma.
Thank you for being light-bearers, everyday-saints and bridge-walkers to Quána. She literately cries tears of joy over the warmth and kindness and faith that people have shown and continue to show.
Organizer and beneficiary
Quana Madison
Organizer
Denver, CO
Chereta Madison
Beneficiary
