Help Avamarie Fight Against Stage IV Breast Cancer

Trigger warning: This campaign deals with topics around breast cancer and hospital procedures.

We've set the campaign table and graciously invite you to have a virtual seat and learn more about Avamarie.

A technically trained dancer for 16 years. A freelance artist who created her first piece of artwork at 4 (imagine crayons in hand and using a television as her canvas). A Fashion Design and Garment Construction graduate from a prestigious vocational program. Avamarie is truly a woman of many disciplines and passions.

While on her creative journey, life was abruptly interrupted by the COVID-19 Pandemic. During this time of isolation, Avamarie began to share her love for plants and food on her blog, #avaeats.

Spending way more time at home meant she could surround herself with tropical and rare and plants, which fast-tracked her success in plant care and design spaces. After creating a popping brand called Plant Bae Collective, it landed her in an esteemed feature in Essence; yup our girl did that!

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While becoming the flyest OG plant mom on the block, Avamarie has also hosted several plant swap meet-ups at Brooklyn Plantology and Stolen Magnolia.

While excelling in her plant glory and foodie dreams, she was hit with devastating, life-changing news.

After a benign result of a surgical biopsy on the right breast in 2009, a doctor told Avamarie she “could just be cystic” and she “didn’t have to take out every cyst she felt.”

After her doctor's reassurances, years went by, and she began to feel a lump in her left breast. But without health insurance and keeping the last doctor’s words in mind, she left it alone. The lump got bigger over time, then the breast and nipple started to change shape, and the pain set in.

Avamarie’s search for employment to get health insurance went into overdrive! She’d been looking for employment throughout the pandemic, and she was finally hired by a great company with excellent benefits and was able to see a doctor in April of 2022. Within 2 weeks, she got the official diagnosis of HER2+ breast cancer.

Avamarie saw many nurses and doctors in a short time: the PCP, the breast surgeon, radiology and oncology. She got a tour of the infusion center and a vein check to determine if she’d need a port to receive the infusions. Appointments for scans were scheduled to determine if/how much the cancer had spread, showing lymph nodes and an area on the bone near the spine were affected.

Finally, she saw interventional radiology to have the port inserted and the bone biopsied, which confirmed the cancer was at Stage IV.

She started chemotherapy on June 22, 2022. Currently, her treatment plan consists of six rounds of chemotherapy, followed by pills for the rest of her life. She has just finished her fourth cycle and is scheduled for another scan to check the progress—but there has been progress!

Avamarie has an extensive treatment plan ahead of her, and while the insurance is helping, it just isn’t enough. You can help keep this progress going in her health journey; donations of any size would be greatly appreciated!

Your support and consideration mean a lot to Avamarie and her family during this time.