Help Fight Laura's Brain Tumor

Megan Bartholomae is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Theresa Sakas.

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This is my sister Laura. She lights up every room she walks into with her humor and positive attitude. Laura is 48 and is in the prime of her life. Laura should be enjoying her life and not dealing with a brain tumor.

Back in 2018, Laura started experiencing excruciating headaches, severe dizziness and double vision. Our family has a history of migraines, so we thought Laura was just having a bad bout of migraines.

After we strongly suggested that she have the double vision checked out, she made an appointment to visit her optometrist to see what was going on. The optometrist noticed both of her optic nerves were severely inflamed and had fluid that had built up behind them and she was told to immediately go to the emergency room for an MRI. Immediately!

That's when Laura's life took a dramatic turn. On the MRI it was discovered that Laura had a very large brain tumor, roughly the size of a grapefruit (or a very large, long sweet potato) Glioblastoma Stage 4 cancer.

GBM is a very aggressive brain cancer, and one of the mostly deadly, so as you can imagine it rocked Laura and our family to the core. Luckily, it was found because Laura's neurosurgeon said if the tumor had not been found when it was, Laura would have only had 3 more months to live. Right after this discovery, Laura went in for brain surgery (two days before Christmas) to remove the tumor. Only 5% of patients do not have any complications from this surgery. We considered it our "Christmas miracle" when the surgery was completed successfully with no complications.

Laura had to have extensive radiation and chemo and was able to celebrate her 1 year cancer-free anniversary at Christmas 2019. But, as typical with a GBM cancer, Laura had a recurrence appear this past summer. Four new tumors were detected, one which is inoperable. This was a huge shock and disappointment for Laura. Through out all of this, Laura has kept a positive attitude and is continuing to live her life to the fullest.

Through out all of Laura's treatments she has been able to continue to work and in fact, she never missed a day of work. (How she did this is beyond me). But this time around, the tumors have affected Laura's short term memory and her balance. She has unfortunately had to quit working.

There is a lot of uncertainty right now, but we are researching and trying to utilize every available option out there to help Laura in her fight. This is a frustrating and confusing process that will take as much support as we can gain to help Laura recover from this initial surgery and from future treatments.

Bills are starting to come in for the various treatments Laura had to undergo and for upcoming treatments. Unfortunately, not all treatments are covered by insurance. Based on what we have seen so far we are hoping that $10,000 should be able to offset her medical costs.

Thank you all for reading this and for your concern. We have been completely overjoyed with the out-pour of concern and the offers of support. We will provide updated information as Laura continues on her journey.
Theresa Sakas (Laura's Sister)

You can support Laura by:
1. Donating here, all money will be for medical costs/ to help Laura
2. Share this information with friends

Picture of Laura's Tumor