Help My Ngoc Nguyen Beat Stage 4 Breast Cancer

Why are we on GoFundMe?

My brother An and I (Huong) found out a week ago (around the end of February), that our mom, My Ngoc Nguyen, has stage 4 secondary (metastatic) breast cancer that has spread to 50% of her liver. 22% of people survive 2 to 5 years with treatment, and the average is 3 to 6 months without. There is no cure, just an extension of life and treatments to stabilize it, which is our hope. I currently live in Seattle with my husband and we are expecting her first grandchild in 5 weeks on April 4th, 2022. We plan to move back to Michigan as soon as we can after the baby is born to be with my parents. I am here to share my family’s story, and memories of my mom. There’s a lot I can talk about, which is a good thing, because it means there've been many memories, some good, some not so good. When we all look back at the combination of memories, though, it’s amazing. If it was all good it wouldn’t be as beautiful, because I wouldn’t be able to acknowledge when things were good and distinguish the difference. There is beauty, even in pain.

As of March 2nd, 2022 we are pushing to get her treatment plan defined and started ASAP. It’s been a very overwhelming time in our lives as my brother and I try to translate, research, advocate, and care for my mom 24 hours a day. She has finally been prioritized as an urgent case at the University of Michigan ER/Hospital system after two weeks of fruitless urgent care and ER visits in the Lansing area in the month of February. We were consistently discharged and told to wait 2 weeks on average to get tests done, plus more wait to be referred to see an oncologist. I know every day matters for my mom, and after the quality vs. quantity of life conversation with her, she chose quantity. Knowing that, I couldn’t sit around anymore, and asked her if she would want to go to the ER at UofM an hour away to try our luck despite knowing that they could turn us away. This was the 3rd ER we would try, and I now believe we are getting the help and support my mom needs to extend her life as long as possible. My mom is a devout Catholic and has prayed a lot, but she said on the way to Ann Arbor she invited Mother Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to come with her. She believes this is why they admitted her into the hospital, are taking her case so seriously, and are fighting to give her more time. It’s beautiful that she is able to have such faith and complete trust in God during this time.

(To see what exactly the funds will be going towards, scroll down to the last section titled Financial Help)

About My Ngoc Thi Nguyen

Our mom is a very selfless person, and this situation has forced her to shift her entire priorities around. For her whole life, she has always prioritized others. When I asked if she wanted to drive to the UofM ER, she asked, what about your brother, doesn’t he have to work? What about your husband Tom, doesn’t he have to fly out later that day? We’ve had to push her to accept that right now, those things don’t matter, it’s what YOU want and need. This is a new concept for her. I told her if she wants to fight cancer she has to be vocal about putting herself first, which is so hard for many people to do, especially women of color who are primary caregivers. It has been a big boost to our spirits that she has shown a willingness to prioritize her health and fight for more time.

My mom grew up in Bén Tre, in the countryside of southern Vietnam. She is the second oldest of 7 siblings. Growing up, my mom’s family was poor. Her father was a carpenter; they had a very small farm and the children would fish and garden to help feed the family. They would clean off by jumping in the river, where they would also catch fresh fish using nets or homemade fishing rods. She said they didn’t have toys, so fishing was a fun activity. They would eat vegetables and fruits all grown from their small farm. She said they were poor, but always so happy.

She told me that in her family her grandma would make natural medicine halfway between school and their home and that was how they made money, and they made her and her siblings help in exchange for feeding them every day after school. Since they were poor my grandpa only bought slippers for them to wear between washing their feet at night and then walking to bed. They would walk barefoot two miles to and from school every day stopping at their grandparents’ house halfway to work on the way home. Her grandparents would grind up the medicine and her and her siblings would start rolling the medicine, starting at the age of 7.

Over time, they saved up enough money to move to Saigon, where her father continued working as a carpenter, making beautiful statues of Catholic Saints for churches in the city. My mom started a job to collect materials to make clothes and garments for her siblings to do embroidery and make money. Sometimes she would get yelled at by the woman who gave her the materials, but she would just say, yes I’ll get better and go back and tell her siblings to do the job.

About our parents

My parents met later in life, after my dad was released as a prisoner of war. They were introduced by my Godmother, who is a nun. My dad was drafted to fight for South Vietnam despite my grandmother trying to change his birth certificate (even now in the United States he is 68, but we think he is in his mid 70s) and stayed in prison for many years. Like many war vets, he has PTSD, but he has always done his best job at supporting our family financially as much as he could and we knew he loved us. As the last person to leave Vietnam in my dad’s family, my dad wanted to make sure that his parents' house wouldn’t be given to the Communist government. He wanted to stay in Vietnam until he could get the paperwork through to confirm that he could get home ownership of the house. He promised God that if it worked out, they would donate their home instead of being able to sell it and have money to bring with us to the United States. The paperwork went through and they left my grandparents house to Vietnamese nuns to develop the first Vietnamese Catholic women’s shelter in the city. There have been hundreds of mothers, babies, and young kids living there over the years, continuing even today. So when my parents came to the United States in 1996, they did not have much money. In Vietnam my dad was an electrician, my mom’s family started a small convenience store, selling oatmeal, sodas, sugars, ramen, etc. but once they got married my parents decided to start a smoothie stand together that was a little bit away from their house, but walking distance. Every day my mom would get on a bike and go get fresh produce to make smoothies, selling smoothies even when she was pregnant with me, almost right up to the birth. She says I talk a lot (she’s not wrong) because when she was selling smoothies she was talking a lot, which makes me smile.

When my dad, mom, and I moved to the United States I was about a year old. It was through a program that helped South Vietnamese war vets immigrate to the United States. My mom was 37 when I was born in Saigon and 39 when she had my brother in Lansing, MI. My dad started at community college, where he worked at the food court and later at an Italian restaurant. Eventually he found a job as an assembler in an auto parts plant. He would work there for a bit, until the Great Recession when the plant was outsourced. Instead of moving out of state, we stayed in Michigan because they didn’t want to uproot my brother and I while we were in school. After that, my dad would apply for jobs over and over and I would even help him apply to jobs online, in 2007-2008 when I was 12 or 13. Then I started helping our family apply for food stamps applications, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits. He never got another job like that despite trying so hard. After working small landscaping jobs, my parent’s friend connected my parents to janitorial work, where they worked for ten years. My mom finished her last day of work the week she was diagnosed with cancer, even after the E.R visit. She loved doing janitorial work despite how hard it was and was never embarrassed. She would make friends with the people who worked in the office buildings she cleaned and was so happy to tell stories about work. Many low-income immigrant stories are similar to ours. When I started to work in marketing at Microsoft out of college I realized there is a large gap of support for people who come from first generation, low-income backgrounds (FLI). A few friends and I started a community called FLI at Microsoft, and today we have over 500 employees. My family’s story is featured on the Microsoft Life Blog here: “I want to help others get a little bit closer to their own dreams.”

Growing up with our mom and dad

My parents have always been willing to make sacrifices for others, and always puts others first. Although we grew up on a low income, my parents would always do what they can to provide for us. We first lived in an apartment and then a low-income townhouse. It was my parents’ dream to be able to afford a townhouse in Village Townhouses, still low-income housing, but walking distance right behind my elementary school, Attwood. My parents still live there today. To live in one of those houses you had to put $10k down to “own” the townhouse, and they had the goal of saving up for that so we could be within walking distance of an elementary school and live in a safer neighborhood. They were able to do it, and we moved to the house just in time to put me there for kindergarten, where my mom would walk me to and from school every day, until she thought we were old enough to walk ourselves home across the grassy, or sometimes snowy, field. In the snow, we would wear our boots and just walk right through it together with my mom. Sometimes the snow would be really high up, past our knees, and we couldn’t make it through as easily, so she would walk first and make a trail for us to walk behind her. We would ask my parents to buy books from the Scholastic Book Fair and they would almost always say yes, even though some of the things I got were more like journals or toys. When I was in high school I asked for a piccolo to play in the school band. We went to the music store, and found out it was $1,000. Even though my parents were hesitant, they said they would pull the money together and get it for me knowing that it would help me accomplish my dreams. My mom made a piggy bank from a round Quaker Oats container and I remember she said she would put at least a dollar a day there to save up for us, sometimes $2, sometimes $5 dollars. Even though she stayed busy at home taking care of us while my dad worked, she still babysat tons of kids during my childhood, and was always very caring towards them. She would sing to them, teach them numbers, writing, everything! It makes me happy to know that she was able to bring joy to so many kids' lives as a babysitter. We hope she can defy the odds and spend time doing the same with her own grandchildren too.

At 26, I thought I would have a lot more time with my mom, and that she would be able to be around my own kids one day. My parents were planning on moving to Seattle to help take care of their first grandchild, my first born, due on April 4th. That will no longer be happening. Instead, we’ll be moving back to Michigan until she passes away. Our idea of life changed instantly, and plans have completely shifted. We can plan for so much and then God has another plan for us.

After graduating college, I convinced my family to go to Vietnam together to visit our family in Vietnam after I graduated college, even though my dad originally had no desire to go back given his memories there, he eventually said he would go. I got to meet my grandma for the first time that I could remember (she had met me as a baby before we flew out) and it was great to be able to see her personality, which is a lot like my mom’s. I had saved all my internship money so we could afford it, and looking back, it was one of my favorite family memories. We got to stay a month there, and I have memories of my mom and I walking back and forth between my Grandma’s and Aunt’s place (the same place my mom lived after moving from Bén Tre, and the shelter (my parents' old home). When it would rain, the rain would reach our calves. It was gross but my mom would say, “don’t worry, just walk through it, you can do it,” and walk ahead of me confidently. After 20+ years of not going back to Vietnam, my mom was so happy to see her own mother and family again. Here’s a photo of us with my grandma.

When I heard the news I was shocked, but I think this happens to everyone who deals with a big diagnosis like this. My family has no health history of breast cancer, so I’m sure it is environmental, maybe from her janitorial job of ten years, who knows. I ran through every scenario in my head to see what I could have done to prevent this, but then I realized it is out of my control, and I have to make peace with the reality. I wake up every day hoping I’m not living a nightmare, but this is real life, and I’m going to make the most of it, just like what I know my mom wants to do with her time. She has a grandkid she wants to meet, after all. I now know how much cancer can affect a family. I have always heard it second hand, but to be in it is a different story. It’s a thread that so many people have in common, but if you don’t know anyone directly, it almost doesn’t feel like it can affect you directly, until it does. It is sad that we have this in common, but to know I am not the only one sitting on the phone on hold for hours, staying up all night to set up Excel trackers for every question to ask every doctor, or to do lists, or finding ways we can support my mom. Researching studies, reading testimonials, joining Facebook community groups and frantically searching for stories like ours. It’s endless information, and when time isn’t on your side, everything has been off balance. There is nothing more important than getting my mom the care she is wishing for.

Stories about our mom

My mom didn’t learn to drive for a long time, and got her driver’s license at 49, which is funny because I got mine at 25, which is also pretty late! She had multiple driving teachers and didn’t give up until she passed. It took her a long time to try to drive, but she did it! My mom had always had laborious jobs. My mom was the main caregiver of the house, always worried about my dad, my brother, and I, and never complained about anything in her life. My dad was in a serious car accident that caused him chronic pain in 2019, and she is always worried that he is too weak, even when she is weaker than him. When released from the hospital, she asked if we could tip the staff, despite knowing she no longer has income. She is completely selfless.

She is also so positive, always seeing the bright side of things, and I think I get my positivity from her. It’s incredibly easy to make her smile or laugh. She will wave at random strangers and say hi. She says I love you to the strangers she meets, too, until I told her people don’t really do that. Until just recently, she volunteered at the Vietnamese church and usually woke up early every Sunday morning to help cook the food, and after church she would stay to sell food or clean up too. She participated in the Mothers Society of the Vietnamese Church, and loved wearing the Vietnamese Ao Dai to mass and feeling pretty in it. She liked participating in the cultural floral presentation and worship for Mother Mary. She flossed every night, and did her best to take care of her teeth, and probably would floss for too long, but it still became a comforting routine for her.

She loved to garden and take care of flowers and plants, sending me photos of cute flowers and plants every time she saw something cool. She would say, sending it to make you happy! She also liked going shopping, thrift, grocery and at the mall. Our family did this for fun growing up because we didn’t have money for other hobbies. She would do random crafts with us growing up, like simple origami, to make a boat and other random things. She and my dad are incredible at gift wrapping. She always hemmed my clothes for me because I’m very short, 4’10, and just hemmed all my maternity pants for me the last time I was back in Michigan in January of 2022. She likes listening to Vietnamese Christian Music. She easily makes friends because she is so kind and genuine. She would cook food for us that was healthy and delicious, from egg rolls to stir fries to pho - she was always health conscious. She would wash and cut fruit and bring it to my brother and me when we studied, and even now that we are adults. Cutting up fruit for her children is a sign of her love. It’s now my turn to cut fruit. I have promised myself I will keep telling stories of her to others and my kids so that they know about her too, even if it’s just through photos, stories, and videos of her. I will do my best to raise my kid the same way she raised us, with positive, selfless love.

With her first grandchild due on April 4th, I’m staying positive that she will survive long enough to meet the baby. Being at 35 weeks and finding out this news is terrible timing, but it gives my family hope that there will be joy soon. This is a photo of her from Tet 2022. She is beautiful inside and out and will always be. She radiates joy and you can tell it in her smile.

Financial Help

With my parents being part time janitorial workers we never expected anything like this to happen. My mom was planning to work for at least 5 more years, and now my parents have no income. At this time neither of my parents have social security, although we have started to get that process started, it may take some time. My mom has Medicaid insurance and they are covering most things, but not all. We have started to get vitamins for her, organic produce and groceries, over the counter medications for pain, and other random costs have come up. She asked for a support pillow and other equipment or comfort self-care purchases, and eventually wigs. She asked if there are salons that give free haircuts to people with cancer, and I’m not sure, but I would like to take her to get pampered and cut her hair as much as she wants.

She has lost a lot of weight and I’d love to get her clothes that fit her better. We are also looking for support towards transportation costs for now as my dad will start taking her on weekly trips to UofM Ann Arbor for chemo and other appointments, driving two hours a day. Funds would also go towards food between the visits to appointments if she were to get food at a restaurant. Her tablet is also in rough shape and is almost 10 years old, so we would love to get her a newer one so she can communicate with friends and family via Facebook would be wonderful.

The largest goal we are aiming for if we get enough funds is moving my family to a place closer to Ann Arbor where the bathroom is on the first floor so she does not have to climb stairs. In the last two weeks she has said that she is too tired to walk up the stairs to shower, so we have moved a twin bed downstairs into the living room for her. All the rooms in our townhouse are upstairs. The oncology team mentioned she would be going to chemo at least once a week, so that would be two hours of driving a week, so we are looking to instead find a home to live in Ann Arbor so she can also book all of her other appointments here, including primary care, dietician, physical therapy, etc. It would be wonderful to live in a home together as a family in the last months of her life.

A wish that my mom has asked for is if she can incorporate more natural, less invasive integrative medicine therapies alongside chemo. Unfortunately, Medicaid does not cover this, so we would be paying out of pocket, and we estimate it would be $500 a session on average. She would have access to meditation, acupuncture, acupressure, massage, dietary supplements research, yoga, music therapy, acupuncture, nutrition and digestion resources. She has always wanted to take more natural approaches to medicine, so we think chemo will be very harsh on her body. She has lost at least 20 lbs within the last couple years, when the cancer started, and has always had trouble with digestion. It would be an incredible blessing if we can balance it out with integrative medicine, as she wishes.

Thank you for considering contributing towards my mom’s battle against cancer. We will post updates on my mom’s journey as she starts treatments. If you’d like to support our family directly, outside of GoFundMe, please feel free to reach out to us to connect. We are so grateful and appreciative of everyone’s love and support for our family. We understand money is tight for a lot of people especially during this time, but for others, always. If you can’t help financially, the biggest thing we need right now is to pray for us/send us positive thoughts/vibes/love. We need that more than anything. Please reach out if you ever want to get in touch. Love, The Nguyen Family