Help Maria Yagoda Get Through Chemo

UPDATE APRIL 3: I love posting! We're raising the goal to 25k because we're almost there, the cold-capping orchestration has been an unexpectedly expensive and time-consuming nightmare for Maria. Oh and honey? There's a run on Aquaphor nationwide.

UPDATE APRIL 1: Claire here! MARIA MET AND SURPASSED HER GOAL IN A MATTER OF HOURS ON A FRIDAY NIGHT. I had absolutely no doubt that this thing would go gangbusters, but Maria is stunned and so grateful. We're going to keep fundraising for Maria, and any additional funds will be used for self-care, incidentals, and living expenses like laundry drop-off, comfy clothes for chemo, cold-capping, apartment cleaning, massage, more transpo, and recreation. She wants me to tell you she is not going to run away with your money and spend it on "diamonds or *******."

Love you!

***

Hi, my name is Claire, and I’ve been a friend of Maria Yagoda for the last decade. Two weeks ago, Maria checked into the ER for what she believed to be symptoms of an ear infection and a swollen lymph node in her neck, just in case they would irritate her during the 17-hour plane ride she had planned to take for work later that week. The doctor easily discerned it wasn’t an ear infection, and poking and prodding of Maria’s body progressed with urgency from there on out: excision of the entire lymph node, a biopsy of tissue, and a PET scan later, Maria was given the diagnosis of advanced Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer where white blood cells grow out of control and cause swollen nodes across the lymphatic system.

Since her diagnosis, Maria’s appointments with NYU-Langone have been ongoing, most notably yesterday, when she visited a surgeon to have a chemo port connected to a vein installed in her chest. Now, starting next week (April 6), Maria will begin aggressive chemo treatment to kill the cancer, which is in her lungs and has traveled to her spleen. She’ll undergo 12 sessions, each lasting about five hours, every other week for 24 weeks (six months). There may be more treatment after that.

If you know Maria, then you understand that she’s handling this terrible news with her signature fearlessness, droll sense of humor, and total mental clarity about the various humiliations, trials, and tribulations we must undergo to live in human bodies. If you don’t know Maria, I'll tell you that she’s a stone-cold genius, a lover of the Italian language, and a new kind of Patron Saint of Old Italian Williamsburg. She’s a food editor, beloved by her writers, who just happens to have a meaty and ruminant sex book, Laid and Confused, coming out on May 30, right in the middle of chemo. Maria is the mother to a rescue chihuahua named Bucatina, a comedy icon, and the most resilient person I’ve ever known.

There’s some good news: Hodgkin Lymphoma is considered to be highly treatable through AAVD treatment. Also, the cost of her chemo treatment will be covered by insurance. But Maria cannot get through the next 24 weeks without community, and though this is harder to talk about, without money.

Maria has two months of full-paid leave at work but will have to continue working through the last four months of her chemotherapy with disability accommodations that reduce her pay. Maria lives alone, and will also require car service both ways to her treatment in Manhattan, plus a dog walker for Bucatina during and after treatment, food delivery on and after chemo days, and funds for over-the-counter pain relief and comfort. Maria has already spent $4,000 in the last two weeks on appointments.

I know we can raise $15,000 for our friend Maria so that she can forget about at least one ongoing worry for the next 24 weeks. Maria is made of the toughest stuff around and doesn’t often ask for help, and yet her zillions of friends and readers have been asking me what else they can do to be there for her.

It’s cruel and idiotic that we live in a country where we have to enter our credit card info into this website every few weeks to help a loved one or an internet friend afford to continue living, but it’s where we are. Maria is forever thankful for every single dollar donated, every dirty dish washed, every heart emoji on her Instagram stories, and every other way people have stepped up for her in the last few weeks.

If you’d like to support Maria further, please pre-order Laid and Confused: Why We Tolerate Bad Sex and How We Stop (out May 30!) on IndieBound, Amazon, Kindle, or at your local Barnes & Noble or indie. Pre-orders make an enormous impact on authors’ sales, plus the book rocks. She signed my copy last week, and I bet she’d do it for you, too.

If you’ve got questions about the specific number breakdown/how we landed on $15,000, let me know. She's got spreadsheets.

Love,

Claire