Help Cristin Beat Tongue Cancer

Help Cristin Beat Tongue Cancer

Cristin needs our help! After months of struggling with unexplained and often debilitating pain, she has been diagnosed with tongue cancer, officially squamous cell carcinoma. She has a long road of treatment and recovery ahead, and our goal is to ease the financial burdens that come with this journey.

Thankfully, her medical team said that though it will be an arduous fight, this cancer is treatable. Her surgeon said he will be seeing her for follow-up appointments many years into the future. But all told, her recovery time will be about one year. That’s a whole year where she will not only be incurring significant medical expense, but she also won’t be able to work. The money we raise will help Cristin with aspects of her treatment not covered, or undercovered, by her insurance, and with co-pays, premiums, deductibles, rent, bills, necessities and comforts while she has no income.

Cristin was officially diagnosed only a couple weeks ago, and big things happened immediately. This week she underwent a 10-hour surgery to remove part of her tongue and reconstruct it with tissue and skin from her arm and leg. Yes, the medical technology at play here is awe-inspiring. Surgeons had to remove a significant part of her tongue and the swelling caused the need to have a tracheal tube placed. Which she reports is decidedly not fun. But she is facing everything with grace and bravery.

After she recovers from surgery, she will undergo radiation, and possibly chemotherapy. She will also need therapy to work on swallowing and speech. We will keep y’all updated on her progress here.

If we can help Cristin and her husband James in reducing the financial burden of this illness and treatment, it will help them to focus on what really matters: her recovery. Lessening the money stress will help them stay positive and hopeful, which we know will make a significant difference in helping Cristin beat this cancer!

Cristin and James are both independent, freelance artists. That means no paid sick time for this, and decreased time and capacity for James to take on work as he takes care of Cristin. Donating to help them right now is a concrete way to not only show your friendship and care for them as people but to support two working artists who devote their lives to entertaining us. And if you've ever seen either of them in action I know darn well you HAVE been entertained. There's no use denying it!

Cristin is the best. She is a hilarious comedian, brilliant working-class actor, union strong, LGBTQIA+ proud, amazing teaching artist, student of life, awesome Spanish-speaking babe, beloved wife, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, partner, and sitter to untold legions of babies and dogs across the land. She has given a lot in her life: love, kindness, friendship, honesty, ideas, perspective, and ineffective but entertaining neurodivergent organizational strategies. And she’s given us so much laughter. She is always able to laugh through hardship, laugh at herself, laugh at us but not in a mean way, laugh with us as we laugh with her, and give us stuff to laugh at, usually intentionally. Point is there’s a lot of laughter involved here and what could be better than that?

Let’s let Cristin know we care, and help her feel loved, cared for and lifted up by community during this crucial time in her life. Please donate what you can! Thank you all so much!