Grant Recipient: Teresa

I want to go back to work and be able to help others

Diagnosis: Stage I Breast Cancer and Lymphedema

Treatment: Radiation, Surgery, Hormonal Therapy, Physical Therapy for Lymphedema

Grant used for: Compression Sleeve, Utilities, Rent, Groceries

The Caretaker Becomes Ill

Teresa already had her hands full. The 69-year-old took it upon herself to take care of the medical and personal affairs of her 88-year-old mother who does not speak English and is also suffering from dementia. Of course, cancer never waits for a convenient time to strike. In March of 2012, Teresa got a stark medical diagnosis of her own – breast cancer. The caretaker was sick!

Lymphedema Strikes

Teresa underwent radiation and surgery to fight the spread of her breast cancer. Unfortunately, the cancer wasn’t done yet making her life difficult. Teresa developed lymphedema as a result of the surgery, which caused painful swelling in her left arm. One way to help alleviate the pain is to wear a compression sleeve and glove, but Teresa’s insurance didn’t cover those items, and she couldn’t afford them on her own!

Slowly Losing Everything

Reeling from the one-two combo of cancer treatment and now physical therapy to help her manage her lymphedema, Teresa was too exhausted to work. With no money coming in and bills piling up, Teresa’s life started to spiral out of control. She was forced to rent a room in a home to save money. Next, she had to give up her car, because she couldn’t afford the insurance. Now, as her physical therapy continues and hormonal therapy looms in the future, Teresa must take the long, slow bus to her many appointments.

Still Wants to Help Others

Teresa desperately wants to find a way to work again so that she can cover her basic needs and hold onto her independence. Despite all of her many trials, Teresa still envisions a day when she can help others. In her grant application, Teresa told us, “I want to start a nonprofit organization to assist women of other countries who have cancer and don’t have the resources to fight this terrible illness.”

With help from our generous donors, we were able to provide Teresa with a grant that allowed her to finally purchase the compression sleeve and glove she needed to help relieve her pain. The grant also went toward covering some of her basic expenses, so she can focus on getting well and perhaps one day starting that nonprofit!

Grant Recipient: Fleur

I am struggling now to pay the monthly bills

Diagnosis: Stage II Breast Cancer

Treatment: Surgery

Grant used for: Rent, utilities, groceries

…First the Mastectomy

Fleur is an 84-year-old widowed mother who was struggling just to get by on her limited Social Security income before breast cancer made her life even more difficult. Due to the size of Fleur’s tumor, she underwent a mastectomy, but that was only the start of her challenges.

…Then the Bills

Fleur was just barely able to make ends meet before her breast cancer diagnosis, and now even co-pays as small as $35 per doctor visit are difficult to pay. Fleur does not have any savings, including retirement savings, and she can only stretch her Social Security payments so far. In fact, when she learned that she was require to cover a $250 co-pay for her surgery, she almost canceled it!

Overdrawn Checking Account

In her grant application, Fleur admitted that she is dreading the thought of getting more bills. Yet, she must continue to go to doctor’s appointments and pay for transportation, because she can no longer drive. Though she lives with three family members, they are all disabled and cannot give her any financial help. In fact, she has even been forced to borrow money from her neighbor just to afford necessary medication. Fleur told us that she must constantly overdraw her checking account just to try and keep up.

We feel great empathy for Fleur’s situation. She deserves great medical care, but on a fixed income it’s easy to feel trapped or overwhelmed by medical expenses. We are happy that, with the support of our donors, we were able to provide Fleur with a grant that helped her cover some of her most pressing bills and basic necessities. We hope that this grant can help Fleur continue her medical treatments so that she can focus on beating her breast cancer.

Grant Recipient: Serenity

I am eternally grateful and am so glad and blessed to have donors out there helping us who have breast cancer.

Diagnosis: Stage IV breast cancer

Treatment: Surgery

Grant used for: Rent payment and groceries

A Single Mom Struggling to Pay Her Bills

Serenity received the shock of her life at age 35 when she was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer. That was eight years ago. Today, Serenity’s breast cancer has progressed to stage IV, and the single mom has spent years in treatment fighting her cancer and struggling to keep up with her bills. It hasn’t been easy with two mouths to feed!

Forced Into Bankruptcy

Due to the severe nature of her diagnosis, Serenity will continue to require ongoing treatment. She has been too weak to work, forcing her to depend on disability payments. Unfortunately, the high cost of her medical bills quickly exceeded the small amount of her disability income. As much as she tried to keep up on her bills, Serenity was forced to file for bankruptcy, a process that she described as “humiliating but necessary.”

Trying to Be a Good Mom

Despite her diagnosis and all the health challenges she faces, Serenity is still dedicated to being a good mom to her nine-year-old son. Like most kids his age, he eats a ton, and Serenity struggles to keep enough food in the house for him. She is hopeful that she will be able to find a job in the future, but until then, the struggle to pay the bills continues.

More Than Worthy

Serenity’s story touched our hearts, and we were pleased to offer her a grant to help relieve some of her stress and worries. Thanks to our donors, we were able to help Serenity cover her rent for several months and to buy enough groceries to even satisfy the appetite of her son! Serenity wrote to us, “I am eternally grateful and am so glad and blessed to have donors out there helping us who have breast cancer.”

Grant Recipient: Christiana

The assistance I received from Shades of Pink California literally kept a roof over my head.

Diagnosis: Stage II breast cancer

Treatment: Chemotherapy, Surgery, Radiation

Grant used for: Housing

A Breast Cancer Diagnosis…and Then Pneumonia

A breast cancer diagnosis is bad enough all on its own, but cancer was only the beginning of Christiana’s health woes. Weakened by chemotherapy, Christiana developed pneumonia that turned septic. The 62-year-old found herself in the ICU for ten days with intubation and pulmonary support. Christiana remembers, “the pneumonia had me close to death and slow to recover.”

Broke, Overwhelmed, and Homeless

After Christiana was pulled back from the brink, she was still too weak to return home. Instead, she slowly recovered in a skilled nursing home. Not surprisingly, Christiana wasn’t able to work, and the bills just kept piling up. By the time she was released from the nursing home, the only things she had to look forward to were breast surgery and six weeks of radiation.

“I felt so lost,” Christiana remembers, “I had been away from my life as I knew it for over four months. I was broke and overwhelmed and homeless.”

Christiana Gets Back on Her Feet

Christiana was in a bad place, living with a friend who could only offer her shelter for one month. She had no job, no money, and little hope. Then, her luck finally started to change. A grant from Shades of Pink, California allowed Christiana to move to her own place and cover rent for two months. That time gave her the reprieve she needed to start looking for work, and she was able to find a part-time job. Christiana tells us that by the time her grant money ran out, she had made enough to cover her rent with her own paychecks. “I am so deeply grateful for your helping me stay afloat long enough to get back on my feet,” she wrote us in a follow-up letter. “Without your help when you gave it, I shudder to think what would have become of me.”

Christiana’s story truly touched our hearts, and her experience proves that a helping hand given at the right time can make a monumental difference in the life of another. It is only with the help of our wonderful donors that we were able to make such a positive difference in Christiana’s life when she was in need.

Grant Recipient: Lindsey

Any little bit helps out in so many ways.

Diagnosis: Stage II breast cancer

Treatment: Chemotherapy, surgery, reconstruction, hormonal therapy

Grant used for: Car payments, groceries

Chemotherapy Before 30!

Lindsey is a beautiful 29-year-old who was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer in March. She continued to work at her job through six courses of chemotherapy. The well-known side-effects of chemotherapy, like fatigue and nausea, meant that she had to drastically cut back her hours at work, As Lindsey wrote in your grant application, “I only make money when I am able to serve.”

Fewer hours means less money coming in, and Lindsey has exhausted all of her savings trying to pay for her medical bills.

Mastectomy Is Looming

When Lindsey sent in her grant application, she was preparing to undergo a mastectomy followed by reconstructive surgery. After the surgery, she will have to quit working for at least several weeks, since she will not be able to carry heavy trays. The prospect of losing all of her income worries Lyndsey, since her fiancé’s income alone will not be enough to cover their bills. In her grant application, she told us, “I have always prided myself on never missing a payment, and having to find alternative ways to make sure all my bills get paid has been added stress at this already stressful time in my life.”

A Grant to a Very Deserving Person

When writing to us, Lindsey’s nurse navigator at Sharp Outpatient Pavilion Oncology Institute described her as “very deserving.” We think so too! With the help of our donors, we were able to ease some of that stress by providing Lindsey with a grant that helped her cover her car bill for three months and buy groceries while she recovered from her surgery. We wish her and her fiancé lots of future happiness together.

Grant Recipient: Noni

Noni and Spike with Nurse Navigator Maureen

The addition of cancer has caused me to lose my independence

Diagnosis: Stage III breast cancer (diagnosed 12/15)

Treatment: Surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, reconstruction

Grant used for: Auto payment, auto insurance, groceries

A Difficult Life, and Then Cancer

For Noni, life has long been a struggle. Early into her 20s, Noni was wracked by chronic back pain and fibromyalgia so severe that she was forced to go on permanent disability. The loss of her health and her autonomy brought on severe bouts of depression. Throughout all these significant challenges, Noni managed to find small rays of happiness. She learned to stretch her small monthly disability payments so that she could afford a simple apartment, and she found unconditional love from her pet dog.

It was a life, and Noni was making it work…until cancer came knocking.

Two Devastating Blows

At end of December, 2015, Noni discovered that she had stage III breast cancer. Her medical team took swift action. She underwent a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction and is now slated to receive radiation therapy. Her doctors want her to also consider chemotherapy, but Noni’s fragile emotional state has left her uncertain about whether she can handle the punishing chemo treatments.

That’s because even as Noni added cancer to her list of health woes, her carefully balanced financial life was also crumbling beneath her feet. In January of this year, she received a notice that her disability benefits were being reduced by 31%. The difference was only a few hundred dollars, but for someone like Noni who was always living on the edge of financial stability, this reduction was more than enough to throw her world into chaos.

Losing Her Independence

Noni never had much, but she was proud of that small apartment. With her benefits severely cut and medical costs piling up, she was forced to move in with a friend. With no family and no savings, she had to accept food donations and transportation help from her small network of friends.

Noni tells us, “The addition of cancer has caused me to lose my independence, and I am struggling to make ends meet.” Her biggest challenges are finding money to make her car payments and to afford gas so she can keep going to her treatments.

At SOPFCA we were glad to give Noni some good news in what has been such a challenging year for her. With the support of our friends at SITE, we were able to provide her with an expanded grant that helped her make a car payment, catch up on car insurance, pay for gas, and buy groceries. We hope that with fewer worries on her plate, Noni will feel emotionally strong enough to accept her doctor’s recommendation and undergo chemotherapy when the time comes.

Our First Grant Recipient — Tara–An Update

In May of this year, Tara published an important update on her Facebook page. It was the announcement that she was officially cancer-free for two years, and she had passed something her doctors called “the survivor anniversary,” the two-year mark after her mastectomy.

“Most people didn’t even know I’d had cancer,” Tara admitted. “I hardly told anyone.”

Back in January of 2015, when we shared Tara’s story as our first grant recipient, she was still in the midst of chemotherapy. Tara was diagnosed with Stage IIB breast cancer in April of 2014. Eventually, she would undergo a left breast mastectomy, radiation therapy, chemotherapy, as well as two reconstruction surgeries.

A Slow Healing

By January of 2016, Tara’s hair was starting to grow back, and the healing process from chemotherapy had begun. However, the journey back to health hasn’t been smooth sailing. Tara explains that her body is still releasing stored toxins from the chemo and radiation drugs and that the cleansing process will take time.
Despite the fact that her body is still bouncing back, Tara is feeling much better. She tells us that she has more energy and feels more focused. “I can actually remember what I’m reading,” she announced, explaining that during chemotherapy her brain was so affected that she struggled to read and write.

A Sense of Support

When we asked Tara what it meant to receive an SOPFCA grant when she was in the middle of treatment, she surprised us with her answer. Though she had lost most of her income during the long treatment process as a result of being too exhausted to keep up with her business, it wasn’t the money that she appreciated the most. It was the support of the community that the grant represented.

“When I first got diagnosed, I realized that I was going to have to face cancer all alone,” Tara admits. “I didn’t know how I was going to do it.” When she found out about the SOPFCA grant, Tara was shocked that an organization existed that was willing to help women like her.

Tara remembers feeling very alone and sad during the beginning of her treatment, but gradually she realized that she never doubted that she had the inner strength to overcome cancer. Her advice for any woman facing breast cancer treatment is to “heal your emotional energy too!” The mind and the body are connected, and you cannot heal the body without also healing the emotional energy.

Moving Forward

As Tara begins to look toward the future, she is eager to bring on more clients and use her newfound energy to expand her business. Every day she feels a little stronger and has written a personal account of her integrated approach to healing cancer, which incorporates traditional and alternative medical practices.

To SOPFCA and all the donors who made her grant possible, she says, “God Bless you!”

We are so happy for Tara’s continued recovery and wish her luck as she closes the cancer chapter of her life and starts a new chapter of health.