Help Chessa pay for Chemo and housing

On October of 2021, my dear friend Chessa lost her disability insurance, the only income that was keeping her afloat in an incredibly turbulent sea. Only a few months earlier, she was diagnosed with an aggressive and rare form of cancer; mantle cell lymphoma. Mantle Cell Lymphoma (or MCL) is a form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and has poor prognosis; the median survival rate with treatment is 2-5 years and the 10 year survival rate is only between 5-10%. Chessa’s cancer was caught in Stage 2, which was fortunate because this cancer is typically diagnosed much later and we hope this will give her a much better shot at recovery and long-term survival. But from the very beginning, her health insurance company fought paying for the care she needed and outright refused to cover the most effective treatments because they do not feel it is worth the money for a statistical longshot. Chessa has had to finance the chemotherapy infusions via large down payments and payment plans so she can access the treatments her doctors have ordered and has been unable to pay for the stem cell transplant that offers the most hope. Now she has lost her only income at the worst possible moment. The patient assistance programs have told her she is ineligible because she had disability insurance at the time, and now that that has failed, she is ineligible due to existing balances for the infusions that her insurance wouldn’t cover. With all available institutional and societal supports having failed, we are hoping that the kindness and generosity of the community around her and around those who love her will not fail. Chessa is a 43 year old mother of three and will soon be welcoming her first grandchild into the world. She is also a wife and caregiver, daughter and sister, beloved friend and skilled chef. She is kind and full of life, laughs easily, lives life with a kind of joyful abandon. Chessa is also disabled and medically-complex. She has been on disability since September 2017, after many years of complex medical issues. She has dysautonomia and EDS, which affect her autonomic nervous system and the collagen throughout her body causing myriad problems. She started to experience severe health problems in May of 2013, but continued to work through until she physically couldn’t manage it any longer. She has been through multiple surgeries including having both of legs broken by the surgeons and rebuilt, but her bones weren’t able to heal properly and she was unable to walk for more than two years. During that time, she had brain surgery to implant a shunt because her intracranial pressure put her at risk for permanent blindness if not treated, and she has lived with a constant headache and suffered fainting episodes multiple times a month since 2013. Once she was unable to work, her private disability income became her ONLY income. It made life possible, despite the immense challenges and pain in her everyday life. Chessa has also applied for Social Security Disability but has been waiting on her hearing for almost 2 years now, due to COVID-related delays. In February of this year, her claims adjuster left the disability insurance company and the new one immediately told her that she had been on long-term disability for too long and has been actively working to end her claim since. They finally claimed Chessa’s doctors did not respond to requests for information (though her doctors are willing to go on record stating they never received such requests) and closed her claim without any notice. On October 8th she had an income and October 9th, she didn’t. She had used every available penny to pay for the chemo her health insurance wouldn’t cover and now has nothing in savings to keep her family afloat. The money was spent to save her life, with theunderstanding that the month to month bills and on-going needs would be covered with the income from her disability insurance. Now she cannot cover their bills, including rent, and has no money to continue her cancer treatments. Both her health insurance and disability insurance, safety nets she has paid into faithfully, have failed her and left her without recourse. She has retained an attorney to fight this and he has never lost a case, Chessa feels confident that he only takes winners and he has told her that her case IS winnable. He says he believes he can get her reinstated, but it will take at least 6 months to do so and possibly up to a year, if they actually have to go to court over it. There are no funds left to support her through this process. Even if Chessa was physically able to do part-time, temporary work to help cover costs, doing so would do irreparable damage to both her Social Security and private disability insurance cases. If she were able to work right now, she would be, but it just is not possible regardless of what one claims adjuster wants to be true. Just this week, Chessa had an abnormal EEG and her doctors suspect she is having complex partial seizures in addition to everything else, and she is no longer allowed to drive. All safety nets have failed her at this point. The system is broken, the cracks are enormous, and until we collectively decide to mend them, people like Chessa will continue to be put in these untenable, seemingly hopeless situations while simultaneously fighting for their lives and trying to care for their families. Chessa cannot wait until we fix these cracks, she needs help right now. Help to feed her family, pay her rent, access life-saving medical care, and keep these cascading nightmares from pulling her under for good. Please help.