Help Dustie Get Her Hysterectomy Surgery

Hello my name is Tiffany and I have set up this GoFundMe to help my sister Dustie get the money for an urgently needed surgery.

Dustie is my only sister ...my baby sister and also my best friend. To know her, is to know what a ray of sunshine she is. When she walks into the room, it immediately lights up. Her laughter fills a room with smiles. She describes herself as a Lisa Frank sticker come to life! She is kind and generous, funny and hard working and her love and devotion to family is unparalleled.

Dustie never married nor had any kids. Ten years ago she moved in with me and my daughter to help raise her niece when I became a single mom. It's been the three of us every since.

For the last year Dustie has been having some problems with bleeding and pain and prolonged periods. Irregular periods are something that she's dealt with most of her life but the bleeding and pain was getting considerably worse. Right before the holidays, she started feeling more exhausted, run down and she was losing weight without trying to. We both work retail and we both have two jobs so this wasn't that uncommon around that time of the year...but this was different.

Two months ago there was an incident where she was bleeding and passing clots profusely, way more than usual, and showed no signs of letting up. The pain was almost unbearable.

We made the appointment with her nurse practitioner for an exam to find out what was going on. The nurse had quite a bit of trouble at that time conducting the exam thoroughly so she recommended her over to the doctor to do the exam. Her doctor had difficulty as well locating her cervix and was unable to obtain biopsy samples. He was not able to really tell what was going on but he knew he could feel a mass. They took a bunch of blood for testing and scheduled her to have an ultrasound. At her next appointment the doctor told her that it wasn't good information he had.

From what he could see Dustie has seven cysts on her ovaries and her uterus is swollen 8 to 10 times larger than what it should be. There is a massive layer of tissue of some kind outside of her uterus as well . He told her that he could not say for sure but that she needed to brace herself to hear it was a cancer diagnosis. He had been unable to take a sample of any kind for a biopsy but the blood work that was taken shows initial precursors for possible ovarian cancer. He immediately referred her to the oncologist.

It was a 3-week wait to get in to see him which was like torture. When we did get in he was very informative, very thorough and sat down with us to talk about what needed to be done and what he was looking at. Because they were unable to get any type of samples for biopsy and because ovaries have to be diagnosed after they're removed, cancer could not be diagnosed immediately 100% but one thing was for sure; She needs to have surgery immediately to have a full hysterectomy.

Regardless of the outcome, this surgery has to be done and as soon as possible. Now here we are at the issue at hand.... a surgery like this is very expensive and because Dustie has not met all her deductible yet the surgeon requires his part be paid before he will perform the surgery, which is $1,500.

Dustie has a good job and she has insurance. We both work two jobs but we live paycheck to paycheck and we have no savings. Getting this amount of money is going to be difficult, if not impossible. We scheduled the surgery for as far out as he would allow to give us enough time to try to raise the money which is one month.

Each day I see my sister in pain and it's getting worse. Each day I see her try and smile and let everybody know she's okay so we don't worry but I know that she's hurting and she's scared and what she needs is to be able to have this surgery and to rest and heal. She had to quit her second job because it was just too exhausting on her and she needs to save her energy for her full time job.

We've never been people that have really ever asked for help. It's hard for us to do.

We love to help others but it's hard for us to admit that we can't do it all. My sister is everything to me and there isn't anything I would not do to help her, including reaching out to others. I have set aside my pride and I am humbling ask for the help of others.

I know that times are very difficult for a lot of people right now and asking for money when people are struggling so much is a hard thing to do. I ask that you consider donating towards this fund to help my sister get this surgery. Even a dollar would be appreciated and if you can't, that is okay as well. We will take your prayers, love, light and positive energy.

My goal is to get the money to cover the surgeon's payment and to finish taking care of Dustie's deductible, which is around $5500. The sooner that my sister can get this surgery done, the sooner that we can get her going on the right path of treatment to a positive and healthy future. I am deeply grateful for the kindness of others and my family and I thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

"Other things may change, but we start and end with Family"